The shock was great. She was white to the lips. By instinct she turned homewards—wandering abroad on open hills was far from her thoughts now. But even so, when she had gone a little way she had to stand and steady herself by a gate-post—her knees trembled so violently under her. For by intuition she knew that she had escaped a great danger. The wretched creature cowering in the gloom of the stairway had not moved hand or foot after his eyes met hers; but something in those eyes, a gleam wild and murderous, recurred to her memory. And she shuddered.
Presently the first effects of the shock abated and left her free to think. She knew then that a grievous thing had happened, and a thing which must add much to the weight of unhappiness she had thought intolerable an hour before. To begin, the near presence of the man revolted her. The last shred of the romance in which she had garbed him, the last hue of glamour, were gone; and in the creature whom she had espied cowering on the stairs, with the danger-signal lurking in his eyes, she saw her old lover as others would see him. How she could have been so blind as to invest such a man with virtue, how she could have been so foolish as to fancy she loved that, passed her understanding now! Ay, and filled her with a trembling disgust of herself.
Meantime, that was the beginning. Beyond that she foresaw trouble and embarrassment without end. If he were taken, he would be tried, and she would be called to the witness box, and the story of her infatuation would be told. Nay, she would have to tell it herself in face of a smiling crowd; and her folly would be in all the journals. True, she had had this in prospect from the beginning, and, thinking of it, had suffered in the dark hours. But his capture had then been vague and doubtful and the full misery of her exposure had not struck her as it struck her now, with the picture of that man on the stairs fresh in her mind. To have disgraced herself for that!—for that!
She was thinking of this and was still much agitated when she came to the spot where the path through the wood diverged from the road. There with his hand on the wicket-gate, unseen until she was close upon him, stood Mr. Bishop.
He raised his hat and stepped aside, as if the meeting took him by surprise, as if he had not been watching her face through a screen of briars for the last thirty seconds. But that due paid to politeness, the runner’s sharp eyes remained glued to her face.
“Dear me, miss,” he said, in apparent innocence, “nothing has happened, I hope! You don’t look yourself! I hope,” respectfully, “that nobody has been rude to you.”
“It is nothing,” she made shift to murmur. She turned her face aside. And she tried to go by him.
He let her go through the gate, but he kept at her side and scrutinised her face with side-long glances. He coughed.
“I am afraid you have heard bad news, miss?” he said.
“No!”