About three minutes later, however, I fancied I heard low whispering, and, having quickly extinguished my light, I drew aside one of my heavy curtains, and peering forth saw, to my surprise, two figures crossing the lawn towards the shrubbery.
The moon was somewhat overcast, yet by the grey, clouded light I distinguished that the pair were a man and a woman. From the man’s back I could not recognise him, but his companion’s gait was familiar to me as she hurried on towards the dark belt of bare, black trees.
It was Mabel Blair. The secret was out. Her sudden desire to visit Mayvill was in order to keep a midnight tryst.
Chapter Seventeen.
Merely Concerns a Stranger.
Without a moment’s hesitation I struggled into an overcoat, slipped on a golf cap and sped downstairs to the room below my own, where I found one of the long windows open, and through it stepped quickly out upon the gravel.
I intended to discover the motive of this meeting and the identity of her companion—evidently some secret lover whose existence she had concealed from us all. Yet to follow her straight across the lawn in the open light was to at once court detection. Therefore I was compelled to take a circuitous course, hugging the shadows always, until I at length reached the shrubbery, where I halted, listening eagerly.
There was no sound beyond the low creaking of the branches and the dismal sighing of the wind. A distant train was passing through the valley, and somewhere away down in the village a collie was barking. I could not, however, distinguish any human voices. Slowly I made my way through the fallen leaves until I had skirted the whole of the shrubbery, and then I came to the conclusion that they must have passed through it by some bypath and gone out into the park.