Page:Jepson--The Loudwater mystery.djvu/161

Rh worrying train of thought forgot that she was dining at all.

After dinner, however, her mood changed. The fearfulness and anxiety at times vanished from her face, and a pleasant, eager expectancy took their place.

At a quarter to nine she took a dark wrap from her wardrobe, went quietly down the stairs, and slipped out of the side door, across the east lawn, and into the path through the shrubbery, unseen. Grey had suggested that he should come to the Castle after dinner to spend the evening with her; but they had decided that it would be wiser to meet in the pavilion. There would be talk if he spent the evening with her so soon after her husband's death, with his body still unburied in the house. This was the only mention they made of him all the time they spent together. Besides, both of them found the pavilion in the wood a far more delightful meeting-place than the Castle. In the pavilion they felt that they were out of the world.

Grey, too anxious and restless to await her at the pavilion, had come down the wood and into the end of the path through the shrubbery. It startled her to come upon him so suddenly. But when they came out of the shrubbery into the moonlit aisle of the wood, the fearfulness and anxiety and restlessness had vanished utterly from their faces; both of them were smiling.