In the prospect of an established household, he was considerably exercised in his mind as to what course to pursue with Whimple and his overburdening sister. Did he consult his own common-sense, he would get rid of them both without any further humouring of indecision. But to this outright action he could not bring himself, and that from an aggravating sentiment no less than a motive of policy. As to the latter, he must needs hesitate before returning to the enemy their possible confederate, whose weakness lay in his unconsciousness of surveillance. As to the former, inexplicable and irritating as it was, he could not deny even to himself that, for some unaccountable reason, he took a secret interest in the poor creature’s personality--was aware of a perverse desire in his own heart that the man would by some means succeed in disabusing him of the prejudice he had formed against him, and end by becoming his devoted and confidential servant. Against this last wish or emotion, unformulated as it was, he would bitterly rebel; but the germ of it quickened in him nevertheless. Now, having dined and smoked a pipe of good tobacco, he wandered off into his grounds, easy and ruminative, and gave thought pleasantly to the brighter side of things. Pushing, presently, into the dense shrubbery that skirted the Stockbridge road, he came suddenly upon a little clearing amongst the bushes, in the middle of which was a bricked dome or segment of masonry, something after the shape of an Esquimaux hut, which protruded from the ground and was accessible by way of a low door or trap of rotted wood. Against this last he kicked, driving it open, and was aware of a pit within, deepish, but half-choked with weedy rubbish--a disused ice-house, by every token of shape and situation. “Mouth of Hades on the dead plains of Enna!” he murmured, with a little self-preening smile over his remembered classics; and he fell a-dreaming, as he strolled away, in that trance of paganism that enwraps many who give licence to their imaginations in silent woods. “But who shall be my Persephone?” he breathed, and thought of one or other of two most meet for abduction. He felt his arms about--whom? No matter. The broken cellar served his fancy for a spell, and, unguessed by him, was to serve his experience by and by with tougher matter than day-dreams. Suddenly, issuing from a dank, dumb little track amongst the bushes, he found himself looking over the ruined garden to the rear of the lodge. He jerked to a halt. Amongst the compact weediness of depraved vegetable stuff, thridding the cumbered paths and alleys of straggled fruit trees, moved the girl Darda. She sang to herself in that odd wild voice of hers, the stinging disharmonies of which seemed to flicker up in the flame of her hair. Then, in a moment she had drifted into the gloom of the porch and vanished.