“No one was walking with me near the pond, at five o’clock or any other hour.”
Mr. Oke turned purple, and made a curious hoarse noise like a man choking.
“I—I thought I saw you walking with a man this afternoon, Alice,” he brought out with an effort; adding, for the sake of appearances before me, “I thought it might have been the curate come with that report for me.”
Mrs. Oke smiled.
“I can only repeat that no living creature has been near me this afternoon,” she said slowly. “If you saw any one with me, it must have been Lovelock, for there certainly was no one else.”
And she gave a little sigh, like a person trying to reproduce in her mind some delightful but too evanescent impression.
I looked at my host; from crimson his face had turned perfectly livid, and he breathed as if some one were squeezing his windpipe.
No more was said about the matter. I vaguely felt that a great danger was threatening. To Oke or to Mrs. Oke? I could not tell which; but I was aware of an imperious inner call to avert some dreadful evil, to exert myself, to explain, to interpose. I determined to speak to Oke the following day, for I trusted him to give me a quiet hearing, and I did not trust Mrs. Oke. That woman would slip through my fingers like a snake if I attempted to grasp her elusive character.
I asked Oke whether he would take a walk with me the next afternoon, and he accepted to do so with a curious eagerness. We started about three o’clock. It was a stormy, chilly afternoon, with great balls of white clouds rolling rapidly in the cold blue sky, and occasional lurid gleams of sunlight, broad and yellow, which made the black ridge of the storm, gathered on the horizon, look blue-black like ink.
We walked quickly across the sere and sodden grass of the park, and on to the highroad that led over the low hills, I don’t know why, in the direction of Cotes Common. Both of us were silent, for both of us had something to say, and did not know how to begin. For my part, I recognised the impossibility of starting the subject: an uncalled-for interference from me would merely indispose Mr. Oke, and make him doubly dense of comprehension. So, if Oke had something to say, which he evidently had, it was better to wait for him.