Now, he had little opportunity to note them; for, almost as he paused, the two separated, the man going off hurriedly towards the house, and the woman advancing in his own direction with a secret manner of haste. As she plunged into the drive, she saw him and drew up with a startled jerk--then came slowly on, her eyes full of fear and defiance. He set his horse across her path and awaited her. “What do you here, woman?” he demanded sternly, as she stopped over against him. She drew her thin shawl about her shoulders. “He--the man,” she muttered, with a sort of fierceness breaking through instinctive deprecation, “does me many a little kindness. I came to see him.” “And tempt him to dishonest traffic in his master’s goods? That is a double-dealing charity.” She clinched her hands and her teeth. He saw “You lie” on her lips, though the words were not uttered. But he hardly resented the implication. He knew in his heart he slandered his servant--that he could never bring himself to do the man justice. For a moment he scanned the seamed face set daringly opposite him. There were traces of a wild, lost beauty furrows of sorrow and want and despair in it to an unprejudiced mind. But that in this instance his was not. “Harkee, mistress!” he said. “I was watching you two once before when you thought yourselves unobserved. Something then passed from him to you--here, in this drive. Do you deny it?” “No,” she said. “Then take warning, and carry your dealing to an open market. I want no secret pilferers about.” He pulled his rein, nodded at her with set lips, and rode on his way. Issuing from the drive a scene of animation, unwonted to that dead prospect, met his gaze. A couple of vans were pulled up before the porch, the horses that had drawn them standing apart and nosing in their bags. Men, a half-dozen of them, were busy going to and fro, lugging huge objects swathed in packing sheets into the house, and returning, hotly slouching and empty-handed. Further, under a tree, stood Darda holding a saddle-horse by the bridle; and on the lawn, walking hither and thither in earnest converse, strolled Whimple and the little baronet of “Chatters.” Now, this latter sight, for all his reasoned conclusions, Mr. Tuke took in with something a scowling displeasure. No doubt the two were long acquainted, relatively as to their different conditions, and had so met and exchanged speech for years before he happened upon the district. None the less, their intimacy at the present juncture annoyed and a little distressed him. He could not be morally confirmed in his mistrust of the servant without questioning the _bona fides_ of any one to whom the latter appeared to give his confidence. It was a foolish--indeed, it seemed an outrageous suspicion in face of the comically ingenuous personality of the poor little Sir David. But why the devil couldn’t the man let Whimple alone?