I met the frightful, louring stare of the house. "What was her name?" I whispered—but into nothing, for, bolt upright as she was, Mrs Bowater had shut her eyes, as if in preparation for a nap.
A thread-like tangle of song netted the air. We were, indeed, trespassers. I darted my glance this way and that, in and out of the pale green whispering shadows in this wild haunt. Then, realizing by some faint stir in my mind that the stiff, still, shut-away figure beside me was only feigning to be asleep, I opened the rain-warped covers of my Sense and Sensibility, and began plotting how to be rid of her for a while, so that my solitude might summon my stranger, and I might recover Fanny's letter.
Then once more I knew. Raising my eyes, I looked straight across at him, scowling there beneath his stunted thorn in a drift of flowers like fool's parsley. He was making signs, too, with his hands. I watched him pensively, in secret amusement. Then swifter than Daphne into her laurel, instantaneously he vanished, and I became aware that its black eyes were staring out from the long face of the motionless figure beside me, as might an owl's into an aviary.
"Did you hear a bird, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired innocently.
"When I was a girl," said the mouth, "sparrowhawks were a common sight, but I never heard one sing."
"But isn't a sparrowhawk quite a large bird?"
"We must judge," said Mrs Bowater, "not by the size, but the kind. Elseways, miss, your old friend might have been found sleeping, as they say, at her box." She pretended to yawn, gathered her legs under her, and rose up and up. "I'll be taking a little walk round. And you shall tell your young acquaintance that I mean him no harm, but that I mean you the reverse; and if show himself he won't, well, here I sit till the Day of Judgment."
An angry speech curled the tip of my tongue. But the simple-faced flowers were slowly making obeisance to Mrs Bowater's black, dragging skirts, and when she was nearly out of sight I sallied out to confront my stranger.
His face was black with rage and contempt. "That contaminating scarecrow; who's she?" was his greeting. "The days I have waited!"
The resentment that had simmered up in me on his behalf now boiled over against him. I looked at him in silence.