But she reflected that, whatever his meaning might have been, she had made herself quite plain; his manner had shown it. His error, perhaps, had been one of over-zeal for her service; though that was not a fault of which she had supposed Morgan would have been likely to be guilty. Still, that was how it might have been. If so, now he understood--that that was not the sort of zeal which she desired. If--as, in spite of his evasions, she thought was possible, he knew where the missing articles were to be found--she gave him an opportunity to restore them, in his own fashion, to their former places, no doubt, when she returned again to the study, she would find them where they had always been. With some vague notion of giving him such an opportunity, there and then, she opened the French window which led into the grounds--through which Elaine Harding had made that entry she was never to forget, which had changed the whole face of the world for her, as well as for others--and, hatless, passed out into the morning air. Although she did not know it, she was setting out on what was to be her last walk through the familiar places she had known so long, and loved so well. CHAPTER XVI GULDENHEIM It was hardly the morning she would have chosen for such a jaunt. A change was impending in the weather. Fickle April seemed to be of opinion that the world thereabouts had already had too fair a taste of summer, and that the time had come for quite a different sort of thing. Heavy banks of cloud scudded across the sky, blown by a cold north-easterly wind, which at times almost amounted to a gale. But Nora was heedless of the weather; her mood was in tune with the wind, wild and vagrant. The chilly breezes blew her hair this way and that, she cared nothing. Now and then a splash of rain was dashed on her uncovered head; she paid no heed. She walked rapidly, delighting in the sensation of striding swiftly through the open air, careless of all else. How far she walked, or how long, she did not know; she kept no count; one could walk some distance without quitting the grounds of Cloverlea; but even she awoke to the fact, at last, that she had better seek shelter, or else go home. The rain threatened to fall in earnest; without hat or jacket, or protection of any sort, she would soon be soaked to the skin. She stood up under the shelter of a tree; as much to enable her to take her bearings as for anything else; and had just realized that the road ran on the other side of the hedge which was close at hand, when a trap came bowling along it, whose driver, seeing her peeping out from behind her tree, brought his horse to a sudden standstill. It was Dr. Banyard.