I said so to Isabel, as, the service over, we walked home. The Greys, I noticed, left their places with the very first who quitted the church, and by the time we had reached the porch, the village fly containing them was already some little way along the road.
“They always do so,” said Isabel, as she pointed it out to me, “and the people have come to understand it and fall back a little to let them pass. But as to who it was that you met the other evening, I must own, Regina, I am completely puzzled. Suppose you tell papa about it and see what he says?”
Mr Wynyard was a little behind us, talking to Mr Franklin.
“Oh, no, no,” I exclaimed, putting out a hand to stop her, as I fancied she was turning towards her father, “oh, no, Isabel. You know your father hates gossip, and he would be sure to ask why I had chosen that lonely road, and we couldn’t help letting him see that I am awfully interested in the Grim House; and then, if the least thing was said about our thinking the man was perhaps a ghost, he would never forget it—he would think it so silly.” Isabel laughed, but yielded to my wishes.
“Papa is not nearly as prosaic and prim as you think,” she said. “But I am quite sure it wasn’t a ghost, Regina.”
“Then how did he get through the wall?” I inquired.
She shook her head.
“I can’t say,” she replied. “There may be a door there. As far as I remember, the wall at that part is a good deal overgrown with ivy. And the door, if there is one, is pretty certainly very seldom used, so it may be almost invisible.”
“Let us go that way to-morrow and look,” I suggested, to which Isabel assented. “Though all the same,” I added regretfully, “if there were a dozen doors, that would not explain what the man was doing at the Grim House, or what has become of him.”
“He may have been a tax-collector,” said Isabel provokingly. She could be mischievous now and then.