He turned about resolutely, and went down by the road the Inspector had taken. After a little time, Philip, from his place of concealment, saw him mounting the path opposite, on the way to Chater Hall.
Through the weary hours, Philip waited, crouched where he was, cramped and stiff, until night came on, and the moon rose, in ghostly fashion, over the hill before him. Then, very cautiously, and looking all about him in case of surprise, he started for the Cottage.
There was a recklessness upon him, greater than any he had felt yet. What happened after this night he scarcely seemed to care; to see that one woman once again, and hold her in his arms, and hear from her own lips the message she had sent him, seemed enough. Whatever Fate might have in store for him after that did not seem to matter; this one night, at least, he was free, and he was going to the woman he loved.
Still, with all his recklessness, he was careful not to expose himself to any danger of capture; in a little time, he became quite an adept at dodging behind hedges, or dropping down flat among thick undergrowth, when any one came near him. But he reached the boundary hedge of the garden he remembered so well at last, and crouched behind it, striving to peer through—wondering how he should reach her, or make his presence known.
Voices in the garden, quite near to him, struck upon his ear; voices of a man and a woman—that of the man soft, smooth, and pleading—that of the woman angry, contemptuous, and scornful. And he knew both voices at once.
The two who talked in that garden in the moonlight appeared to be further up the lawn than the spot where he was; looking eagerly in that direction, he saw that the regularity of the trim hedge was broken by a thick growth of small trees, whose branches swept down to the ground. Gliding along noiselessly, he got amongst these, and lay flat, within a few feet of the pair upon the lawn; could see them distinctly, standing there facing each other—Ogledon and Madge Barnshaw. That they had arrived at a crisis of some kind in their talk was evident; for Madge stood proudly erect and defiant, looking at the man, who slashed savagely at the grass with a cane he held.
“Will nothing move you?” Ogledon was saying, without looking up at her. “Do you think it is nothing for me, who am no mere boy, to be the sport of a girl—do you think it’s nothing for me to have to plead, again and again, with you, when it is my nature to bend people to my will, and gain what I desire by force?”
“I have told you—many, many times already—that you might as well fling yourself against a rock, as strive to move me by any pleading. You are a coward, in any case, to assail me like this, when I have already told you that my heart is given to some one else——”
“Bah!—a mere girlish whim—a boy-and-girl affair, that should have been forgotten and done with in the days of pinafores. Besides, Dandy Chater is”—he hesitated, and seemed for a moment uncertain what to say; turned the sentence swiftly, and asked instead, with his keen eyes raised to her face—“By the way—where is this wonderful lover of yours?”
There was a pause for a moment, while the listener almost held his breath, and while Ogledon never took his eyes from her face. Then she went a little nearer to him, and held her head more proudly still.