‘How very deaf!’ she murmured.  She exclaimed loudly—­

‘The second turning to the right.’

She had advanced her face to within a foot of his own, and in speaking mouthed very emphatically, fixing her eyes intently upon his.  And now his first suspicion was indubitably confirmed.  Her eyes were as black as midnight.

All this feigning was most distasteful to Graye.  The riddle having been solved, he unconsciously assumed his natural look before she had withdrawn her face.  She found him to be peering at her as if he would read her very soul—­expressing with his eyes the notification of which, apart from emotion, the eyes are more capable than any other—­inquiry.

Her face changed its expression—­then its colour.  The natural tint of the lighter portions sank to an ashy gray; the pink of her cheeks grew purpler.  It was the precise result which would remain after blood had left the face of one whose skin was dark, and artificially coated with pearl-powder and carmine.

She turned her head and moved away, murmuring a hasty reply to Owen’s farewell remark of ‘Good-day,’ and with a kind of nervous twitch lifting her hand and smoothing her hair, which was of a light-brown colour.

‘She wears false hair,’ he thought, ’or has changed its colour artificially.  Her true hair matched her eyes.’

And now, in spite of what Mr. Brown’s neighbours had said about nearly recognizing Mrs. Manston on her recent visit—­which might have meant anything or nothing; in spite of the photograph, and in spite of his previous incredulity; in consequence of the verse, of her silence and backwardness at the visit to Hoxton with Manston, and of her appearance and distress at the present moment, Graye had a conviction that the woman was an impostor.

What could be Manston’s reason for such an astounding trick he could by no stretch of imagination divine.

He changed his direction as soon as the woman was out of sight, and plodded along the lanes homeward to Tolchurch.

One new idea was suggested to him by his desire to allay Cytherea’s dread of being claimed, and by the difficulty of believing that the first Mrs. Manston lost her life as supposed, notwithstanding the inquest and verdict.  Was it possible that the real Mrs. Manston, who was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood—­the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband?

In her complicated distress at the news brought by her brother, Cytherea’s thoughts at length reverted to her friend, the Rector of Carriford.  She told Owen of Mr. Raunham’s warm-hearted behaviour towards herself, and of his strongly expressed wish to aid her.

’He is not only a good, but a sensible man.  We seem to want an old head on our side.’