The face was the face of Mrs. Wornock; and Mrs. Wornock must be somewhere between the terrace and the gates. There was no moon, but the night was clear, and the sky was full of stars. Allan went swiftly round the angle of the house to the terrace outside the large window; but the figure that he had seen from within was no longer stationed outside the window. The terrace was empty. He went round to the front of the house, whence the carriage drive wound with a gentle curve to the gates, between shrubberies of laurel and arbutus, cypress and deodara. Yes, the figure he had expected to see vanished round the curve of the drive as he drew near the porch, a slender figure in dark raiment, with something white about the head and shoulders. He ran along the drive, and reached the gate just in time to see Mrs. Wornock's brougham standing in the road, at a distance of about fifty yards, and to see Mrs. Wornock open the door and step in. Another moment--affording him no time for pursuit, had he even wished to pursue her--and the carriage drove away. Allan had no doubt as to the motive of this conduct. She had come by stealth to look upon the face of the man whom she had refused to meet in the beaten way of friendship. CHAPTER IX. "SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE." After the incident of that September night, there was no longer the shadow of doubt in Allan's mind as to the relations between his father and the lady at Discombe Manor. That they had known each other and loved each other in their youth he was now fully convinced. This last strange act of Mrs. Wornock's was to his mind the strongest link in the chain of evidence. Whatever the relations between them had been, guilty or innocent--and fondly as he loved his father, he feared there had been guilt in that association--it was his duty to prevent any meeting between them, lest the mere sight of that pale, spiritual face with its singular youthfulness of aspect, should re-awaken in his father's breast some faint ghost of the passion that had lived and died a quarter of a century ago. Nor did his respect for his honest-minded, trustful-hearted mother permit him to tolerate the idea of friendly intercourse between her and this mysterious rival from the shadowland of vanished years. He took care, therefore, to discourage any idea of visiting the Manor; and he carefully avoided any further talk of Mrs. Wornock, lest his father's closer questioning should bring about the disclosure of her identity. His father's manner, when the lady was first discussed, had shown him very clearly that the description of her gifts and fancies coincided with the memory of some one known in the past; but it had been also clear that neither the name of Wornock, nor the lady's position at Discombe, had any association for Mr. Carew. If he had known and loved her in the past, he had known and loved her before she married old Geoffrey Wornock.