In half an hour James Maynard, the signalman, would be due at his box to take his "spell" of night-duty. His thick blue overcoat was hanging behind the door ready to put on, his wife was washing up the crockery, and Maynard himself was smoking a last after-tea pipe before leaving home. He was a well-built stalwart man, with a jet-black beard and moustache, and close-cut hair of the same colour, to which his dark-blue eyes offered a somewhat striking contrast. He had been about three months in his present situation, and among the drivers and guards who worked the traffic between the junction and the collieries he had come to be known by the sobriquet of "Gentleman Jim." It was not that he ever set himself up as being in anyway superior to or different from his mates; indeed, he was universally popular; but these grimy-faced men, who in their way are often keen observers of character, had an instinctive feeling that, although necessity might have made him one of them to outward seeming, he was not so in reality, and that at some anterior time his position in life must have been widely different from that which he now occupied. But genial and good-natured though "Gentleman Jim" might be, he was a man who brooked no questioning, and no one thereabouts knew more about him than he chose to divulge of his own accord.
Maynard and his wife had been chatting pleasantly together. Suddenly the latter laid a hand on her husband's arm to bespeak his attention.
"What is it?" he asked. "I heard nothing."
"There was a noise of wheels a moment ago, and now it has ceased. It sounded as if some vehicle had stopped suddenly at the end of the lane. Do you remain in the background, dear, while I go and ascertain whether any one is there."
She opened the door and went out quickly. There was still light enough in the valley to see objects a considerable distance away. One side of the lane in which the cottage was built was bounded by a high bank. Up this Mrs. Maynard now clambered, assisted by the branch of a tree; she knew that from the top of it she could see not only the lane, but a considerable stretch of high-road on either hand. After gazing for a moment or two, she leaped lightly down and ran back to the cottage. "A carriage with two horses is standing at the corner of the lane," she said to her husband. "A lady has got out of it, and is coming towards the cottage, and--oh, my dear--I'm nearly sure it's Lady Fanny Dwyer."
"Lady Fan! Well, I shall be very glad to see her. No doubt she is visiting at Seaton Park; and as she knows we are living in the neighbourhood, she must have made inquiries and discovered our whereabouts."
"I hope she has not made her inquiries in such a way as to arouse any suspicion that we are at all different from what we seem to be?"
"I think you may trust Lady Fan for that. She generally knows pretty well what she is about.--But had you not better go and meet her?"
Clara hurried to the door; but as she opened it, Lady Fan appeared on the threshold. She looked a little white and scared, adventures with a spice of risk or romance in them not being in her usual line. Making a step forward and grasping Clara's hand, she said in a whisper: "Is it safe to speak aloud? Is there any one but yourselves to hear me?"
Reassured on this point, Lady Fan threw herself into her friend's arms and burst into tears, holding out a hand to Gerald as she did so. "I can't talk to either of you till I have had my cry," she said between her sobs. "What a wicked, wicked world this is!"