“Did you detect those mysterious footsteps again last night?”
The look of wistfulness changed to another which I hated to see in her eyes, an expression of repressed fear.
“No,” she replied in a very low voice, “but why do you ask the question?”
Doubt of her had been far enough from my mind, but that something in the tone of my voice had put her on her guard I could see.
“I am naturally curious,” I replied, gravely.
“No,” she repeated, “I have not heard the sound for some time now. Perhaps, after all, my fears were imaginary.”
There was a constraint in her manner which was all too obvious, and when presently, laden with the spoil of the rose garden, she gave me a parting smile and hurried into the house, I sat there very still for a while, and something of the brightness had faded from the coming, nor did life seem so glad a business as I had thought it quite recently.
CHAPTER XIII. AT THE GUEST HOUSE
I presented myself at the Guest House at half-past eleven. My mental state was troubled and indescribably complex. Perhaps my own uneasy, thoughts were responsible for the idea, but it seemed to me that the atmosphere of Cray’s Folly had changed yet again. Never before had I experienced a sense of foreboding like that which had possessed me throughout the hours of this bright summer’s morning.