Neither man nor horse had lacked for refreshment while waiting. And so presently they set out, Miss Baynard leading the way by about a dozen yards. This lasted till they had gone some six or eight miles, and had reached a point where it became necessary to diverge from the great highway they had hitherto been traversing and take to one of the tortuous cross-country roads which branched off into the desolate region of fells and moors. Then the position of the two was reversed, and it was the man who led the way.
It was quite dark by the time they reached Rockmount, or as nearly so as it ever is on a clear, starlit autumnal night. As Miss Baynard drew rein in front of the house, her mind was busy with the incidents of that other night, now many months old, when one whom she had since learnt to love in secret with all the fervency of a first great passion had brought her to the door of Rockmount and had there left her. How full of incident for her those months had been! What a changed life, both inwardly and outwardly, had hers become between then and now!
Her guide, having dismounted, gave a resounding knock on the great oaken door and then helped Miss Baynard to alight. When that was done he led the horses away towards the back premises, and the same instant there was the sound of bolts and bars being unloosened one by one. So remote and lonely was the house that it was no wonder the inmates looked carefully to their fastenings.
Then the door was opened, disclosing the same sour-visaged old serving-man, carrying a lighted candle, whom Nell had seen on the first occasion.
"Be good enough to tell your master that Miss Baynard is here," she said.
Making an arch of one of his knotted hands, he peered at her for a moment or two from under it. Then he said: "The Master is expecting yo. Will yo be pleased to come in?"
And so for the second time, Nell crossed the threshold of Rockmount. The door having been shut behind her, the old fellow led the way across the hall, and so brought her presently to the same sparsely furnished room with which she was already so well acquainted. Then she was left alone.
As Nell looked round the room she could have fancied that only a few hours had gone by since she was last there. The candles were alight, a cheerful fire was burning in the grate; the heavy curtains of faded red moreen were closely drawn; nothing was changed. From moment to moment she looked to see Mr. Cope-Ellerslie enter.
Would he, when they met, treat her as a stranger, or as one whom he knew already? It was a question she had asked herself more than once while on her way to Rockmount. That he knew the pseudo Mr. Frank Nevill to be none other than Miss Baynard, of Stanbrook, he had himself furnished her with proof positive in the return of her mask; but did he know at the time he gave her a night's lodging who she was, or did he not discover it till afterwards? And, in either case, by what mysterious means had he made the discovery? She had not forgotten, nor was it likely she should forget, that in the chamber assigned her at Rockmount she had found a certain feminine garment, but whether placed there by accident or design she had no means whatever of knowing. If by design, then must Mr. Ellerslie from the first have penetrated the secret of her sex. It was a thought which, even after all this time, caused the blood to tingle in her veins.
But these questions, personal to herself, perplexing though they were, did not cause her for more than a minute or two at a time to lose sight of the main object which had brought her to Rockmount, while wholly at a loss to imagine how it had come to pass that the first news of the lost child should have reached her through Mr. Ellerslie, and neither through Bow Street nor Geoffrey Dare. Not that it mattered greatly, so long as news of him had come to hand. She was all impatience to hear what Mr. Ellerslie had to tell her.