"Who is it? Hullo! Good lord! it's her!"
As he spoke to himself a figure suddenly appeared in a shaft of moonlight which had found its way along an alley of pines--the figure of a woman. She was clad in white--in some long, flowing garment which trailed behind her as she went, and which must have seriously impeded her progress, especially in view of the fact that she seemed to be pressing forward at the top of her speed. The keen-eyed observer watched her as she went.
"What's she got on? It's a tea-gown or a dressing-gown or something of that. It's strange to me. I've never seen her in it before. So, after all, there is something in the tales those gowks have been telling, and she does walk the woods of nights. But she can't be asleep; she couldn't go at that rate, through country of this sort, if she were, and with all that drapery trailing out behind her. But asleep or not I'll tackle her and have it out with her once and for all."
Mr Day climbed over the stile with an agility which did credit to his years. As he reached the other side the woman in the distance either became conscious of his presence and his malevolent designs or fortune favoured her; because, coming to a part of the forest from which the moon was barred, she suddenly vanished from his vision like a figure in a shadow pantomime. When he gained the spot at which she had last been visible, there was still nothing of her to be seen, but he fancied that he caught a sound which suggested that, not very far away, someone was pressing forward among the trees.
"She did that very neatly. Don't talk to me about her being asleep. She both heard and saw me coming, so she's given me the slip. But she's not done it so completely as she perhaps thinks. I'll have her yet. I'll show her that I'm pretty nearly as good at trapesing through the woods at night as she is. I don't want to be hard on a woman, and I wouldn't be if it could be helped, but when it comes to be a question of Mr Morice or her, it'll have to be her, and that's all about it. I don't mean to let her go scot-free at his expense--not much, I don't, as I'll soon show her!"
He plunged into the pitch blackness of the forest, towards where he fancied he had heard a sound in the distance.
CHAPTER XXXV
[IN THE LADY'S CHAMBER]
Miss Arnott was restless. She had to entertain her two self-invited guests--Mr Stacey and Mr Gilbert, and she was conscious that while she was entertaining them, each, in his own fashion, was examining her still. It was a curious dinner which they had together, their hostess feeling, rightly or wrongly, that the most dire significance was being read into the most commonplace remarks. If she smiled, she feared they might think her laughter forced; if she was grave, she was convinced that they were of opinion that it was because she had something frightful on her mind. Mr Stacey made occasional attempts to lighten the atmosphere, but, at the best of times, his touch was inclined to be a heavy one; then all his little outbursts of gaiety--or what he meant for gaiety--seemed to be weighted with lead. Mr Gilbert was frankly saturnine. He seemed determined to say as little as he possibly could, and to wing every word he did utter with a shaft of malice or of irony. Especially was he severe on Mr Stacey's spasmodic efforts at the promotion of geniality.
Miss Arnott arrived at two conclusions; one being that he didn't like her, and the other that she didn't like him. How correct she was in the first instance may be judged from some remarks which were exchanged when--after the old fashion--she had left them alone together to enjoy a cigarette over their cups of coffee, the truth being that she felt she must be relieved from the burden of their society for, at anyrate, some minutes.