These were notions darting through a half nourished gentleman nipped in the frame by a severely frosty night.  Truly a most beautiful night!  She would have delighted to see it here.  The Downs were like floating islands, like fairy-laden vapours; solid, as Andrew Hedger’s hour of eating; visionary, as too often his desire!

Redworth muttered to himself, after taking the picture of the house and surrounding country from the sward, that he thought it about the sharpest night he had ever encountered in England.  He was cold, hungry, dispirited, and astoundingly stricken with an incapacity to separate any of his thoughts from old Andrew Hedger.  Nature was at her pranks upon him.

He left the garden briskly, as to the legs, and reluctantly.  He would have liked to know whether Diana had recently visited the house, or was expected.  It could be learnt in the morning; but his mission was urgent and he on the wings of it.  He was vexed and saddened.

Scarcely had he closed the garden-gate when the noise of an opening window arrested him, and he called.  The answer was in a feminine voice, youngish, not disagreeable, though not Diana’s.

He heard none of the words, but rejoined in a bawl:  ’Mrs. Warwick!—­Mr. Redworth!’

That was loud enough for the deaf or the dead.

The window closed.  He went to the door and waited.  It swung wide to him; and O marvel of a woman’s divination of a woman! there stood Diana.

CHAPTER IX

Shows how A position of delicacy for A lady and gentleman was met in simple fashion without hurt to either

Redworth’s impulse was to laugh for very gladness of heart, as he proffered excuses for his tremendous alarums and in doing so, the worthy gentleman imagined he must have persisted in clamouring for admission because he suspected, that if at home, she would require a violent summons to betray herself.  It was necessary to him to follow his abashed sagacity up to the mark of his happy animation.

‘Had I known it was you!’ said Diana, bidding him enter the passage.  She wore a black silk mantilla and was warmly covered.

She called to her maid Danvers, whom Redworth remembered:  a firm woman of about forty, wrapped, like her mistress, in head-covering, cloak, scarf and shawl.  Telling her to scour the kitchen for firewood, Diana led into a sitting-room.  ‘I need not ask—­you have come from Lady Dunstane,’ she said.  ‘Is she well?’

‘She is deeply anxious.’

’You are cold.  Empty houses are colder than out of doors.  You shall soon have a fire.’

She begged him to be seated.

The small glow of candle-light made her dark rich colouring orange in shadow.

‘House and grounds are open to a tenant,’ she resumed.  ’I say good-bye to them to-morrow morning.  The old couple who are in charge sleep in the village to-night.  I did not want them here.  You have quitted the Government service, I think?’