He had looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight o’clock. Unconsciously he had begun to walk toward Castle Mona. “I’m not for misdoubting my wife, not me; but then a man may be over certain. I’ll find out for myself; and if it’s true, if she’s there, if she meets him.... Well, well, be aisy for all, Davy; be aisy, boy, be aisy! If the worst comes to the worst, and you’ve got to cut your stick, you’ll be doing it without a heart-ache anyway. She’ll not be worth it, and you’ll be selling yourself to the Divil with a clane conscience. So it’s all serene either way, Davy, my man, and here goes for it.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Quiggin had been going through similar torments. “I don’t blame him,” she had thought. “It’s that mischief-making huzzy. Why did I ask her? I wonder what in the world I ever saw in her. If I were not going away myself she should pack out of the house in the morning. The sly thing! How clever she thinks herself, too! But she’ll be surprised when I come down on her. I’ll watch her; she sha’n’t escape me. And as for him—well, we’ll see, Mr. David, we’ll see!”
As the clock in the hall in Castle Mona was striking eight these good souls in these wise humors were making their several ways to the waterfall under the cliff, in the darkest part of the hotel grounds.
Davy got there first, going in by the gate at the Onchan end. It struck him with astonishment that Lovibond was not there already. “The man bragged of coming, but I don’t see him,” he thought. He felt half inclined to be wroth with Lovibond for daring to run the risk of being late. “I know someone who would have been early enough if he had been coming to meet with somebody,” he thought.
Presently he saw a female form approaching from the thick darkness at the Douglas end of the house. It was a tall figure in a long cloak, with the hood drawn over the head. Through the opening of the cloak in front a light dress beneath gleamed and glinted in the brightening starlight. “It’s herself,” Davy muttered, under his breath. “She’s like the silvery fir tree with her little dark head agen the sky. Trust me for knowing her! I’d be doing that if I was blind. Yes, would I though, if I was only the grass under her feet, and she walked on me. She’s coming! My God, then, it’s true! It’s true, Davy! Hould hard, boy! She’s a woman for all! She’s here! She sees me! She thinks I’m the man?”
In the strange mood of the moment he was half sorry to take her by surprise.
Davy was right that Mrs. Quiggin saw him. While still in the shadow of the house she recognized his dark figure among the trees. “But he’s alone,” she thought. “Then the huzzy must have gone back to her room when I thought she slipped out at the porch. He’s waiting for her. Should I wait, too? No! That he is there is enough. He sees me. He is coming. He thinks I am she. Umph! Now to astonish him!”
Thus thinking, and both trembling with rage and indignation, and both quivering with love and fear, the two came face to face.
But neither betrayed the least surprise.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, if I’m not the man———” faltered Davy.