Late on the next Sunday afternoon Gifford had gone for a country walk
which he had arranged to bring him round in time for the evening service
at the little village church of Wynford standing just outside the park
boundary. His way took him by well-remembered field-paths which, although
towards the end of his walk darkness had set in, he had no difficulty in
tracing. The last field he crossed brought him to a by-road joining the
highway which ran through Wynford, the junction being about a quarter of
a mile from the church. As he neared the stile which admitted to the road
he saw, on the other side of the hedge and showing just above it, the
head of a man. At the sound of his footsteps the man quickly turned,
and, as for a moment the fitful moonlight caught his face, Gifford was
sure he recognized Gervase Henshaw. But he took no notice and kept on his
way to the stile, which he crossed and gained the road. As he did so he
glanced back. A horse and trap was waiting there with Henshaw in it. He
was now bending down, probably with the object of concealing his
identity, and had moved on a few paces farther down the road.
Why was he waiting there? Gifford asked himself the obvious question with
a decidedly uneasy feeling. Henshaw the Londoner, on a Sunday evening,
waiting with a horse and trap in an unfrequented lane, a road which ran
nowhere but to a farm. What did it mean?
Naturally Gifford's suspicions connected Edith Morriston with the
circumstance, and yet he told himself the idea was monstrously
improbable. It was more likely that Henshaw was bound upon some search
with the police. His movements were and had been for some time
mysterious enough.
Gifford's impulse as he turned into the high road was to stay there in
concealment and watch for the upshot of Henshaw's presence. The
suggestion did not, however, altogether commend itself to him. He
disliked the idea of spying even upon such a man as Henshaw, whom he had
good reason to suspect of playing a dastardly game. It was probable, too,
that Henshaw had recognized him and might be on the look-out; it would be
intensely humiliating to be caught watching. So, turning the pros and
cons over in his mind, Gifford walked slowly on in a state of
irresolution till he came to a wicket-gate which admitted from the road
to a path which ran through the churchyard.
There he stopped, debating with himself whether he should turn back and
keep an eye on Henshaw or go on into the church where service was just
beginning. It did seem absurd to imagine that Henshaw with his conveyance
could be waiting there by appointment for a girl of the character and
position of Edith Morriston. True, he had seen them walking together in
secret, which was strange enough, but that need not necessarily have been
a planned meeting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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