Page:The Avenger.djvu/168

152 "I have been here before," was the somewhat short answer.

Wrayson produced his card-case.

"As we seem likely to see something of one another during the next few days, nolens volens," he remarked, "may I introduce myself? My name is Wrayson, Herbert Wrayson, and I come from London."

The stranger took the card a little doubtfully.

"I am much obliged," he said. "I do not carry a card-case, but my name is Duncan."

"An Englishman, of course?" Wrayson remarked smiling.

"I am English," Mr. Duncan answered, "but I have not been in England for many years."

There was something about his manner which forbade any further questioning on Wrayson's part. The two men sat together in silence, and Wrayson, although not of a curious turn of mind, began to feel more than an ordinary interest in his companion. One thing he noticed in particular. Although, as the sun sank lower, the beauties of the landscape below increased, Duncan's eyes scarcely for a moment rested upon them. He had turned his chair a little, and he sat directly facing the château. The golden cornfields, the stained-glass windows of the grey church rising like a cathedral, as it were, in the midst of the daffodil-starred meadows, caught now with the flood of the dying sunlight mingled so harmoniously with their own time-mellowed richness, the increasing perfume of the flowers by which they were surrounded,—none of these things seemed for one moment to distract his attention. Steadily and fixedly he gazed up that deep green avenue, empty indeed of any moving object, and yet seemingly not empty