These plantations wonderfully improved the approach to Penwyn Manor House. They gave an indication of residential estate, as it were, and added importance to the country seat of the Penwyns; the Manor House of days gone by having been an isolated mansion set in a wild and barren landscape. Now-a-days the traveller surveyed these well-kept plantations on either side of a wide high road, and knew that a lord of the soil dwelt near. Maurice entered the Manor House grounds by the north lodge. He might have chosen a shorter way, but he had a fancy for taking another look at the woman who had first admitted him to Penwyn, and who had become notorious since then, on account of her son’s wrong doing. The iron gate was shut, but the woman was near at hand, ready to admit visitors. She was sitting on her door-step, basking in the afternoon sunshine. She no longer wore the close white cap in which Maurice had first seen her. To-day her dark hair, with its streaks of grey, was brushed smoothly from her swarthy forehead, and a scarlet handkerchief was tied loosely across her head. That bit of scarlet had a curious effect upon Maurice Clissold’s memory. Two years ago he had vaguely fancied the face familiar. To-day brought back the memory of time and place, the very moment and spot where he had first seen it. Yes, he recalled the low water meadows, the tow-path, the old red-tiled roofs and pointed gables of Eborsham; the solemn towers of the cathedral, the crook-backed willows on the bank; and youth and careless pleasure personified in James Penwyn. This lodge-keeper was no other than that gipsy who had prophesied evil about Maurice Clissold’s friend. A slight thing, perhaps, and matter for ridicule, that dark saying about the severed line of life on James Penwyn’s palm; but circumstances had given a fatal force to the soothsayer’s words. ‘What!’ said Maurice, looking at the woman earnestly as she unlocked the gate, ‘you and I have met before, my good woman, and far away from here.’ She stared at him with a stolid look. ‘I remember your coming here two years ago,’ she said. ‘That was the first and last time I ever saw you till to-day.’ ‘Oh no, it was not—not the first time. Have you forgotten Eborsham, and your fortune-telling days, when you told my friend Mr. Penwyn’s fortune, and talked about a cut across his hand? He was murdered the following day. I should think that event must have impressed the circumstance upon your mind.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rebecca Mason answered, doggedly. ‘I never saw you till you came here. I was never at any place called Eborsham.’ ‘I cannot gainsay so positive an assertion from a lady,’ said Maurice, ironically; ‘but all I can say is, that there is some one about in the world who bears a most extraordinary likeness to you. I hope the fact may never get you into trouble.’