Sara guessed immediately that she must have trespassed again on the Far End property, but reflecting that neither its owner nor his lynx-eyed servant was likely to be abroad in such a downpour as this, and that, even if they were, and chanced to discover her, they could hardly object to her taking refuge in this outlying shelter, she shook the rain from her skirts and sat down to await the lifting of the storm.

As always in such circumstances, the time seemed to pass inordinately slowly, but in reality she had not been there more than a quarter of an hour before she observed the figure of a man emerge from some trees, a few hundred yards distant, and come towards her, and despite the fact that he was wearing a raincoat, with the collar turned up to his ears, and a tweed cap pulled well down over his head, she had no difficulty in recognizing in the approaching figure her fellow-traveller of the journey to Monkshaven.

Evidently he had not seen her, for she could hear him whistling softly to himself as he approached, while with the fingers of one hand he drummed on his chest as though beating out the rhythm of the melody he was whistling—­a wild, passionate refrain from Wieniawski’s exquisite Legende.  It sounded curiously in harmony with the tempest that raged about him.

For himself, he appeared to regard the storm with indifference—­almost to welcome it, for more than once Sara saw him raise his head as though he were glad to feel the wind and rain beating against his face.

She drew back a little into the shadows of the summer-house, hoping he might turn aside without observing her, since, from all accounts, Garth Trent was hardly the type of man to welcome a trespasser upon his property.

But he came straight on towards her, and an instant later she knew that her presence was discovered, for he stopped abruptly and peered through the driving rain in the direction of the summer-house.  Then, quickening his steps, he rapidly covered the intervening space and halted on the threshold of the shelter.

“What the devil——­” he began, then paused and stared down at her with an odd glint of amusement in his eyes.  “So it’s you, is it?” he said at last, with a short laugh.

Once again Sara was conscious of the extraordinary intensity of his regard, and now, as a sudden ragged gleam of sunlight pierced the clouds, falling athwart his face, she realized what it was that induced it.  In both eyes the clear hazel of the iris was broken by a tiny, irregularly shaped patch of vivid blue, close to the pupil, and its effect was to give that curious depth and intentness of expression which Molly had tried to describe when she had said that Garth Trent’s were the kind of eyes which “make you jump if he looked at you suddenly.”

Sara almost jumped now; then, supported by her indignant recollection of the man’s churlishness on a former occasion, she bowed silently.