“If I were close behind her, she would never see me,” she thought.
She struck across the lawn to the iron gate and passed into the Park. The brambles and the tangled undergrowth caught at her dress as she paused for a moment looking about her in the summer night.
There was no trace of Aurora’s white figure among the leafy alleys stretching in wild disorder before her.
“I’ll not attempt to find the path she took,” thought Mrs. Powell; “I know where to find her.”
She groped her way into the narrow footpath leading to the lodge. She was not sufficiently familiar with the place to take the shortcut which the “Softy” had made for himself through the grass that afternoon, and she was some time walking from the iron gate to the lodge.
The front windows of this rustic lodge faced a road that led to the stables; the back of the building looked towards the path down which Mrs. Powell went, and the two small windows in this back wall were both dark.
The ensign’s widow crept softly round to the front, looked about her cautiously, and listened. There was no sound but the occasional rustle of a leaf, tremulous even in the still atmosphere, as if by some internal prescience of the coming storm. With a slow, careful footstep, she stole towards the little rustic window and looked into the room within.
She had not been mistaken when she had said that she knew where to find Aurora.
Mrs. Mellish was standing with her back to the window. Exactly opposite to her sat James Conyers the trainer, in an easy attitude, and with his pipe in his mouth. The little table was between them, and the one candle which lighted the room was drawn close to Mr. Conyers’s elbow, and had evidently been used by him for the lighting of his pipe. Aurora was speaking. The eager listener could hear her voice, but not her words; and she could see by the trainer’s face that he was listening intently. He was listening intently, but a dark frown contracted his handsome eyebrows, and it was very evident that he was not too well satisfied with the bent of the conversation.
He looked up when Aurora ceased speaking, shrugged his shoulders, and took his pipe out of his mouth. Mrs. Powell, with her pale face close against the windowpane, watched him intently.
He pointed with a careless gesture to an empty chair near Aurora, but she shook her head contemptuously, and suddenly turned towards the window; so suddenly, that Mrs. Powell had scarcely time to recoil into the darkness before Aurora had unfastened the iron latch and flung the narrow casement open.
“I cannot endure this intolerable heat,” she exclaimed, impatiently; “I have said all I have to say, and need only wait for your answer.”
“You don’t give me much time for consideration,” he said, with an insolent coolness which was in strange contrast to the restless vehemence of her manner. “What sort of answer do you want?”
“Yes or No.”
“Nothing more?”
“No, nothing more. You know my conditions; they are all written here,” she added, putting her hand upon an open paper which lay upon the table; “they are all written clearly enough for a child to understand. Will you accept them? Yes or No?”
“That depends upon circumstances,” he answered, filling his pipe, and looking admiringly at the nail of his little finger, as he pressed the tobacco into the bowl.
“Upon what circumstances?”
“Upon the inducement which you offer, my dear Mrs. Mellish.”
“You mean the price?”
“That’s a low expression,” he said, laughing; “but I suppose we both mean the same thing. The inducement must be a strong one which will make me do all that,”—he pointed to the written paper—“and it must take the form of solid cash. How much is it to be?”
“That is for you to say. Remember what I have told you. Decline tonight and I telegraph to my father tomorrow morning, telling him to alter his will.”
“Suppose the old gentleman should be carried off in the interim, and leave that pleasant sheet of parchment standing as it is. I hear that he’s old and feeble; it might be worth while calculating the odds upon such an event. I’ve risked my money on a worse chance before tonight.”
She turned upon him with so dark a frown as he said this, that the insolently heartless words died upon his lips and left him looking at her gravely.
“Egad,” he said, “you’re as great a devil as ever you were. I doubt if that isn’t a good offer after all. Give me two thousand down, and I’ll take it.”
“Two thousand pounds!”
“I ought to have said twenty, but I’ve always stood in my own light.”
Mrs. Powell, crouching down beneath the open casement, had heard every word of this brief dialogue; but at this juncture, half-forgetful of all danger in her eagerness to listen, she raised her head until it was nearly on a level with the windowsill. As she did so, she recoiled with a sudden thrill of terror. She felt a puff of hot breath upon her cheek, and the garments of a man rustling against her own.
She was not the only listener.
The second spy was Stephen Hargraves the “Softy.”
“Hush!” he whispered, grasping Mrs. Powell by the wrist, and pinning her in her crouching attitude by the muscular force of his horny hand; “it’s only me; Steeve the ‘Softy,’ you know; the stable-helper that she” (he hissed out the personal pronoun with such a furious impetus that it seemed to whistle sharply through the stillness)—“the fondy that she horsewhipped. I know you, and I know you’re here to listen. He sent me into Doncaster to fetch this” (he pointed to a bottle under his arm); “he thought it would take me four or five hours to go and get back; but I ran all the way, for I knew there was soommat oop.”
He wiped his streaming face with
