“Perhaps he tripped ovver a stoan and hurt hisself,” the farmer’s wife went on, “though if it’s that it seems queer you saw nowt of him as you came along. Besides, I don’t know what he would be doing tripping ovver a boulder, anyway. I reckon he knows the road blindfolded, and there are no boulders to hurt if you keep to the path.”
I could have argued that point with her, for I had nearly twisted my ankle on one group of boulders and had badly barked my shins on another. But it was hardly worth while debating it, since apparently Hartrey had not tripped over a boulder or we should have tripped over him. At this moment, too, a girl emerged from the kitchen, carrying a lamp held high so that she might see who the visitors were. Her sharper eyes discovered the two ladies, and she made a step towards them.
“Her ladyship!” she cried, “and Miss Kitty! Come right in. What is the trouble?”
That was my first introduction to Nora Lepley, a young woman of whom I was to know a good deal more before I finished with her. She was tall and finely built, with plentiful hair so dark as to be almost black, and eyes that in some lights seemed to be of a rich purple and in others of a sombre, rather heavy blue. They were wonderful eyes and one had no need to wonder that the men of the Dale should be, to use Lady Clevedon’s words, “crazy over her.” She had then more admirers than she could count on the fingers of both her slim, capable hands, and is still unmarried. I think I know why, though I have hardly any right to say so.
She spoke with an educated intonation, in curious contrast with her mother, who used the ordinary dialect of the Dale. Beautiful, clever, educated, entirely self-possessed, she was certainly something of a novelty to discover in a Cartordale farm-house.
“I thought you were at White Towers with your aunt,” Lady Clevedon said.
“I have just run home to get some clothes,” the girl replied. “I am going back to-night to stay with Aunty. She is terribly upset. But what is the trouble here?”
“The trouble is,” Lady Clevedon retorted grimly, “that I have a fool for a chauffeur. I sent him here with a message, but he hasn’t been nor did he come back to us. He went off into the darkness and apparently stopped there, leaving me and the car on the roadway for anybody to run into.”
“Well, he hasn’t been here,” the girl said, with a decision that was evidently characteristic of her. “Wait until I get a lantern and we’ll look for him.”
Lady Clevedon followed Mrs. Lepley and her daughter into the house, and for a minute or two Miss Kitty Clevedon and I were left together in the porch. She could have followed the others into the house, but for some reason preferred to wait outside. Possibly she wanted to see what I would do. She did not look at me—I noticed that—but stood near the door, not quite with her back to me, but so that if it had been light I could not have seen her face. She did not speak to me, but I had of course no intention that she should get off as easily as that.