The revelation held me rigid. I stood there, peering down, watching their movements, and straining my ears to catch the whispered words. As I feared to open the window lest the noise should attract them, I could do no more than remain a spectator of Edith’s perfidy. To me it seemed as though she had been walking with him, and he had accompanied her back to the house. As he held her hand, he was bending, whispering some earnest words into her ear. She did not attempt to withdraw; indeed, it was apparent that she was not unwilling. The conclusion to be made was that they were lovers.
Reader, can you imagine my feelings at this astounding discovery? Only six hours before we had stood beside the river, and she had vowed that for no man save myself had she any place in her heart; yet with my own eyes I was watching her while she believed me sleeping in calm ignorance of her movements. That she had been walking with him was apparent, because of the shawl she wore wrapped about her head; while the fact that the stranger carried a stout stick showed that he had walked, or was about to walk, a considerable distance. Because his hat was drawn over his brow and his coat collar turned up, I could not see his features. To me, as he stood there, he appeared to be slightly round-shouldered, but, nevertheless, a strongly built fellow, seemingly rather above the average height.
How long she had been absent from the house I could not tell. Her light step across the lawn had not attracted my attention. Only his low, gruff voice on their return had caused me to listen. There was a French window near where they were standing, and it was evident that by means of this she had secretly left the house.
Across the moon there drifted a strip of fleecy cloud, hiding the lawn and garden for a few moments; then suddenly all became brilliant again, and, looking down, I saw that she had moved, and was unconsciously in the full white light. I caught sight of her countenance, so that her identity became undeniable. He was urging her to speak, but she remained silent. Again and again he whispered into her ear, but she shook her head. At last she spoke. I heard what she said, for I had contrived to raise the sash an inch or two.
“Very well, I promise,” she said. “He leaves to-morrow.”
“And you will not fail?” asked the gruff voice of her clandestine companion.
“No. Adieu!”
And as I watched I saw his dark figure striding away in the full moonlight across the lawn. He did not glance back, but went straight over to the belt of elms on the left, and a few minutes later was lost to view, while the woman I loved had apparently re-entered the house by the dining-room window, and was creeping silently to her room.
The one thought that gripped my heart and froze my senses was that Edith was false to me. She had a lover whom she met at dead of night and with whom she had a perfect understanding. She had made him a promise, the fulfilment of which was to take place when I had left. Had such things been told to me I would not have believed them, but I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. The truth was too terribly plain. Edith, the one woman in the world whom I had believed to be pure, honest, and upright, was false to me. I saw it all as I reclosed the shutters, relit the candles in their old silver sconces, and paced that ancient bed-chamber. The reason of her attempt to evade me and to withdraw her promise of marriage was only too apparent. She, the woman whom I loved and in whom I had put all my faith, had a lover.
As I reflected upon our conversation of that afternoon I saw in her uneasiness and her responses a self-condemnation. She dreaded lest I should discover the secret within her breast—the secret that, after all, she did not love me. The dark silhouette of that man standing forth in the brilliant light of the moon was photographed indelibly upon my memory. His outline struck me as that of a man of shabby attire, and I felt certain the hat drawn down upon his face was battered and worn. Indeed, I had a distinct conviction that he was some low-born lout from the neighbourhood—a conviction aroused, I think, by her announcement that I was to leave on the morrow. She would have freedom of action then, I reflected bitterly. And her promise? What, I wondered, had she promised? The fellow had evidently been persuading her until she had at last given him her pledge. His gait was that of a man who knew the place well, the swinging step of one used to walking easily in rough places. His stick, too, was a rough ash, such as a town-bred lover would never carry, while his voice had, I felt certain, just a tinge of the Norfolk accent in it. That they should meet at dead of night in that clandestine manner was surely sufficiently suspicious, but those words I had overheard sounded ever in my ears as I paced from end to end of that old room with its sombre, almost funereal, hangings.