"George Crofton here!" murmured Clara, her heart seeming to turn to ice as she spoke. "Surely, surely, Margery, you must be mistaken."
"I only wish I was, mistress," responded the girl fervently; "but he only need speak for me to pick him out of a thousand men in the dark. Besides, I saw his face with the cut in his lip and his teeth showing through."
For a little while Clara was so dazed and overcome that she could neither speak nor act. In that first shock her mind had room for one thought and one only: George Crofton was on the track of her husband! No other purpose could have brought him to this out-of-the-world place. Gerald must be warned and at once; but first she must hear all that the girl had to tell. She had turned mechanically, and was now retracing her way to the cottage.
"I suppose Mr. Crofton saw you at the same moment you saw him?" she said anxiously.
"I saw him, but he never set eyes on me."
"How could that happen?"
"I'll tell you all about it, mum. I had got my groceries and had left the village and was coming along pretty fast, 'cos I was a bit late, when just as I was getting near the end of a lane I hears two men coming along it talking to one another. I was not a bit a-feared; but still I thought I might as well keep out of their sight; so just before they turned out of the lane, I slipped into the dry ditch that runs along the hedge-bottom and crouched down. They passed me without seeing me, still talking, and then I knowed at once that one of 'em was Muster Crofton. 'We are before our time,' says he to the other one; 'we shall have nearly an hour to wait.' Then says the other: 'Better be afore our time than after it.' After going a bit up the road, they crossed it, and passing through a stile, got into the fields, I making bold to skulk after 'em, first taking off my shoes so as they shouldn't hear me. On they went, I following, till they came to a hollow where there's a lot of trees, and in the middle of the trees a little house that seems, as well as I could make out, as if somebody had pulled it half to bits and then left off. When they were well inside, I followed on tiptoe; and then I heard one of 'em strike a match, and then I saw a light through the broken shutter of a little window. Going up to the window, I peeped in. Two lanterns had been lighted, and by the light of one of 'em I could see Muster Crofton's face quite plain. I couldn't make out much of what they talked about, only that they were waiting for somebody, and once the other man said: 'We shall be quite time enough if we leave here by half-past ten.' Then Muster Crofton, he swore, and said that he never could a-bear waiting."
"Did you hear them mention your master's name?" asked Clara anxiously.
"No, mum, not once."
Clara was puzzled. To her wifely fears it seemed impossible that Crofton's presence should not bode danger to her husband. It was almost incredible that he should be there unless he were on the track of Gerald. Yet, on the other hand, what could be the nature of the business which took him at that late hour to a ruined cottage buried among trees? It almost looked as if he were concerned in some dark and nefarious scheme of his own. Suddenly a fresh thought struck her, and as it did so she came to an abrupt halt.