‘And you’ll be here when I come in?’
‘No, I am going down to the inn to see if my things are brought up.’
‘But hasn’t mother asked you to stay here? The spare room was got ready for you.... Dear me, I am afraid I ought to have told you.’
‘She did ask me. But I have some things coming, directed to the inn, and I had better be there. So I’ll wish you good-night, though it is not late. I will come in quite early to-morrow, to inquire how your mother is going on, and to wish you good-morning. You will be back again quickly this evening?’
‘O yes.’
‘And I needn’t go with you for company?’
‘O no, thank you. It is no distance.’
Pierston then departed, thinking how entirely her manner was that of one to whom a question of doing anything was a question of permission and not of judgment. He had no sooner gone than Avice took a parcel from a cupboard, put on her hat and cloak, and following by the way he had taken till she reached the entrance to Sylvania Castle, there stood still. She could hear Pierston’s footsteps passing down East Quarriers to the inn; but she went no further in that direction. Turning into the lane on the right, of which mention has so often been made, she went quickly past the last cottage, and having entered the gorge beyond she clambered into the ruin of the Red King’s or Bow-and-Arrow Castle, standing as a square black mass against the moonlit, indefinite sea.