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"She knows us to-day," said Rachel, "and she is quite cheerful." "Does the poor thing know her book is burned?" "No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the spring." The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the subject. "I travelled from Pontesbury this morning," he said, "with that man who was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored him at Wilderleigh.
"I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon," said Doll, stretching a leg outside the open end of the pew. "I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters worms. They are some of my best tenants, and they won't like it when they hear of it. And I'll go round the young pheasants.
The moon, entangled in a dim thicket, got up behind him. At last he stopped short. That farm on the right! He had seen it before. Yes. That was Greenfields. Doll had pointed it out to him when they had walked on that Sunday afternoon to Beaumere. They had left the road here, and had taken to the fields. There was the gate. Hugh opened it. Crack had been lost here and had rejoined them in the wood.
Lady Newhaven thought the thaw might come any day. Captain Pratt had been skating yesterday on the parental flooded meadow. Flooded with fire-engine. Men out of work. Glad of employment, etc. How kind of Captain Pratt to employ them. Not at all. It was his father. Duties of the landed gentry, etc. He believed if the frost continued they would skate on Beaumere.
No; no one was allowed to skate on Beaumere. The springs rendered the ice treacherous. Silence. Captain Pratt turned the gold knob of his stick slowly in his thick, white fingers. He looked carefully at Lady Newhaven, as a connoisseur with intent to buy looks at a piece of valuable china.
In an amicable silence, broken occasionally by whistling for Crack, who hurried blear-eyed and asthmatic out of rabbit-holes, the pair reached Beaumere; and, after following the path through the wood, came suddenly upon the little lake locked in the heart of the steeply climbing forest. Doll stood still and pointed with his stick for fear Hugh might overlook it.
But she would understand presently. He would make it all very clear and plain, and she would love him again, when he had got rid of this other Hugh. He would take him down and drown him in Beaumere. It was the only way to get rid of him. And he, the real Hugh, would get safely through. He had done it once, and he knew. He should stifle and struggle for a little while.
Tristram leaned on the stone balustrade that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was watching two distant figures, followed by a black dot, stroll away across the park. One of them seemed to drag himself unwillingly. Mr. Tristram congratulated himself on the acumen which had led him to keep himself concealed until Doll and Hugh had started for Beaumere.
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