The fog was already so much thicker that I wondered whether the gentleman with our letter would be able to find his way back to London that night, and even whether I could find mine back to the Alders. I must be sure to keep to the drive in crossing the park. But, before I got to that, I lost myself among the garden-paths, and walked into a flower-bed; and I began to think I should have to find my way back to the door and ask ignominiously to be led to the gate, when I heard voices on my left; and I made my way recklessly in their direction across grass, flower-beds, and everything. I could not see the speakers yet, for there was a hedge or something between us; but I could distinguish that they were the voices of a young man and a young woman of the lower class. Thinking one of them at least must be a servant at the Hall, and able to direct me, I was just going to speak through the hedge, when a few words in the man’s voice stopped me. “I have had enough of you Norfolk girls; you are too stand-off for me.” It was the voice of Tom Parkes. “Yes, to such weather-cocks as you,” answered the girl, with rough coquetry. “Why, you were keeping company with that ugly Sarah at Mr. Rayner’s; and, now she is ill, you want to take up with me. Oh, a fine sweetheart you’d make!” But she was not as obdurate as these words promised. It seemed to me, with my suspicions concerning Tom already strong, that in the talk which followed he managed with very little difficulty to find out a good deal about the ways of the household, and also that he spoke as if he had learnt from her a good deal already. Presently I heard the sound of a kiss, and he promised to come and see her again on Wednesday; and then they went away; while I, seized by a sudden inspiration, found my way not to the park, but back to the house, which was less difficult. I asked for Miss Maud Reade again; and this time she rushed out of the drawing-room and met me in the hall as soon as I was announced, and whispered-- “They are all in there. Come into the library.” “May I have my letter back, just to put in something I have forgotten?” said I. “Oh, yes; here it is!”--and she drew it from her pocket. “Write it here. I will give you a pen. Why, how white you look! Has anything happened?” “Oh, no, no, nothing, thank you!” I wrote on a half-sheet of paper, which I carefully folded inside my letter, these words-- “A man who was at Denham Court, and about whom I have strong suspicions, is hanging about the Hall now. He is coming here again on Wednesday night.”