Did not wank to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur, when he had distinctly said he did not wish to see him? Fleda felt sick, merely from the mysterious dread which could fasten upon nothing and therefore took in everything.
"Well what about tea?" concluded Barby, when the fire was going according to her wishes. "Will you have it, or will you wait longer?"
"No--we won't wait--we will have it now, Barby," said Fleda, forcing herself to make the exertion; and she went to the window to put down the hangings.
The moonlight was very bright, and Fleda's eye was caught in the very act of letting down the curtain, by a figure in the road slowly passing before the courtyard fence. It paused a moment by the horse-gate, and turning paced slowly back till it was hid behind the rose acacias. There was a clump of shrubbery in that corner thick enough even in winter to serve for a screen. Fleda stood with the curtain in her hand, half let down, unable to move, and feeling almost as if the very currents of life within her were standing still too. She thought, she was almost sure, she knew the figure; it was on her tongue to ask Hugh to come and look, but she checked that. The form appeared again from behind the acacias, moving with the same leisurely pace the other way towards the horse-gate. Fleda let down the curtain, then the other two quietly, and then left the room and stole noiselessly out at the front door, leaving it open that the sound of it might not warn Hugh what she was about, and stepping like a cat down the steps ran breathlessly over the snow to the courtyard gate. There waited, shivering in the cold but not feeling it for the cold within,--while the person she was watching stood still a lew moments by the horse-gate and came again with leisurely steps towards her.
"Seth Plumfield!"--said Fleda, almost as much frightened at the sound of her own voice as he was. He stopped immediately, with a start, and came up to the little gate behind which she was standing. But said nothing.
"What are you doing here?"
"You oughtn't to be out without anything on," said he,--"you're fixing to take your death."
He had good reason to say so. But she gave him no more heed than the wind.
"What are you waiting here for? What do you want?"
"I have nothing better to do with my time," said he;--"I thought I'd walk up and down here a little. You go in!"