When, at last, she was alone in her own room, she was tingling with excitement. At any moment some one, some unknown friend and ally, might present himself. It was exciting, but, she thought, rather risky.
For instance, supposing Henry’s letter came, by any mischance, into the wrong hands—and letters were mislaid and stolen sometimes—what a perfectly dreadful chapter of misfortunes might ensue. She frowned, and decided that Henry had been rash.
It was with a pleasant feeling of superiority that she put on her hat and went out into the garden to pick tulips.
The weather had changed in the night, and it was hot and sunny, with the sudden dazzling heat of mid-April. In the walled garden the south border was full of violet-scented yellow tulips, each looking at this new hot sun with a jet-black eye. A sheet of forget-me-nots repeated the sheer blue of the sky.
Jane picked an armful of tulips and a sheaf of leopard’s bane. Strictly speaking, she should then have gone in to put the flowers in water for the adornment of the Yellow Drawing-Room. Instead, she made her way to the farthest corner of the garden and basked.
At first she looked at the flowers, but after a while her eyelids fell.
Jane has never admitted that she went to sleep, but, if she was thinking with her eyes shut, her thoughts must have been of an extremely engrossing nature, for it is certain that she heard neither the opening nor the shutting of a door in the wall beside her. She did feel a shadow pass between herself and the sun, and opening her eyes quickly she saw standing beside her the very man from whom she had fled in terror yesterday.
The sunlight fell from upon him, showing the shabby clothes, the tall, stooping figure, the grizzled beard, and that disfiguring scar.
With a great start Jane attempted to rise, only to discover that a wheelbarrow may make a very comfortable chair, but that it is uncommonly difficult to get out of in a hurry. To her horror the man, George Patterson, took her firmly by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. She shrank intensely from his touch, received an impression of unusual strength, and then, to her overwhelming surprise, she heard him say in a low, well-bred voice, “I have a letter for you, Miss Smith.”
“Oh, hush!” said Jane—“oh, please, hush!”