“Well, you must explain who we are,” said Mark while the echoes of the bell died away on the silence within the house and they waited for the footsteps that should answer their summons.  The answer came from a window above the porch where Mrs. Honeybone’s face, wreathed in wistaria, looked down and demanded in accents that were harsh with alarm who was there.

“I am the Rector’s sister, Mrs. Honeybone,” Esther explained.

“I don’t care who you are,” said Mrs. Honeybone.  “You have no business to go ringing the bell at this time of the evening.  It frightened me to death.”

“The Rector asked me to call on you,” she pressed.

Mark had already been surprised by Esther’s using her brother as an excuse to visit the house and he was still more surprised by hearing her speak so politely, so ingratiatingly, it seemed, to this grim woman embowered in wistaria.

“We lost our way,” Esther explained, “and that’s why we’re so late.  The Rector told me about the water-lily pool, and I should so much like to see it.”

Mrs. Honeybone debated with herself for a moment, until at last with a grunt of disapproval she came downstairs and opened the front door.  The lily pool, now a lily pool only in name, for it was covered with an integument of duckweed which in twilight took on the texture of velvet, was an attractive place set in an enclosure of grass between high grey walls.

“That’s all there is to see,” said Mrs. Honeybone.

“Mr. Starling is abroad?” Esther asked.

The housekeeper nodded.

“And when is he coming back?” she went on.

“That’s for him to say,” said the housekeeper disagreeably.  “He might come back to-night for all I know.”

Almost before the sentence was out of her mouth the hall bell jangled, and a distant voice shouted: 

“Nanny, Nanny, hurry up and open the door!”

Mrs. Honeybone could not have looked more startled if the voice had been that of a ghost.  Mark began to talk of going until Esther cut him short.

“I don’t think Mr. Starling will mind our being here so much as that,” she said.

Mrs. Honeybone had already hurried off to greet her master; and when she was gone Mark looked at Esther, saw that her face was strangely flushed, and in an instant of divination apprehended either that she had already met the squire of Rushbrooke Grange or that she expected to meet him here to-night; so that, when presently a tall man of about thirty-five with brick-dust cheeks came into the close, he was not taken aback when Esther greeted him by name with the assurance of old friendship.  Nor was he astonished that even in the wan light those brick-dust cheeks should deepen to terra-cotta, those hard blue eyes glitter with recognition, and the small thin-lipped mouth lose for a moment its immobility and gape, yes, gape, in the amazement of meeting somebody whom he never could have expected to meet at such an hour in such a place.