Far away, across
the river, I heard a soft bell ring three times, and three times, and
again three times, and I turned away, and my eyes were full of tears. 'I didn't know what it was when I came to it; I only found out
afterwards that it must have been Hampton Court. One of the men in the
office told me he had taken an A. B. C. girl there, and they had great
fun. They got into the maze and couldn't get out again, and then they
went on the river and were nearly drowned. He told me there were some
spicy pictures in the galleries; his girl shrieked with laughter, so he
said.' Mary quite disregarded this interlude. 'But you told me you had made a map. What was it like?' 'I'll show it you some day, if you want to see it. I marked down all the
places I had gone to, and made signs--things like queer letters--to
remind me of what I had seen. Nobody but myself could understand it. I
wanted to draw pictures, but I never learnt how to draw, so when I tried
nothing was like what I wanted it to be. I tried to draw a picture of
that town on the hill that I came to on the evening of the first day; I
wanted to make a steep hill with houses on top, and in the middle, but
high above them, the great church, all spires and pinnacles, and above
it, in the air, a cup with rays coming from it. But it wasn't a success. I made a very strange sign for Hampton Court, and gave it a name that I
made up out of my head.' The Darnells avoided one another's eyes as they sat at breakfast the
next morning. The air had lightened in the night, for rain had fallen at
dawn; and there was a bright blue sky, with vast white clouds rolling
across it from the south-west, and a fresh and joyous wind blew in at
the open window; the mists had vanished. And with the mists there seemed
to have vanished also the sense of strange things that had possessed
Mary and her husband the night before; and as they looked out into the
clear light they could scarcely believe that the one had spoken and the
other had listened a few hours before to histories very far removed from
the usual current of their thoughts and of their lives. They glanced
shyly at one another, and spoke of common things, of the question
whether Alice would be corrupted by the insidious Mrs. Murry, or whether
Mrs. Darnell would be able to persuade the girl that the old woman must
be actuated by the worst motives. 'And I think, if I were you,' said Darnell, as he went out, 'I should
step over to the stores and complain of their meat. That last piece of
beef was very far from being up to the mark--full of sinew.' III

It might have been different in the evening, and Darnell had matured a
plan by which he hoped to gain much. He intended to ask his wife if she
would mind having only one gas, and that a good deal lowered, on the
pretext that his eyes were tired with work; he thought many things might
happen if the room were dimly lit, and the window opened, so that they
could sit and watch the night, and listen to the rustling murmur of the
tree on the lawn. But his plans were made in vain, for when he got to
the garden gate his wife, in tears, came forth to meet him. 'Oh, Edward,' she began, 'such a dreadful thing has happened! I never
liked him much, but I didn't think he would ever do such awful things.' 'What do you mean? Who are you talking about? What has happened? Is it
Alice's young man?' 'No, no. But come in, dear. I can see that woman opposite watching us:
she's always on the look out.' 'Now, what is it?' said Darnell, as they sat down to tea. 'Tell me,
quick! you've quite frightened me.' 'I don't know how to begin, or where to start. Aunt Marian has thought
that there was something queer for weeks. And then she found--oh, well,
the long and short of it is that Uncle Robert has been carrying on
dreadfully with some horrid girl, and aunt has found out everything!' 'Lord! you don't say so! The old rascal! Why, he must be nearer seventy
than sixty!' 'He's just sixty-five; and the money he has given her----'

The first shock of surprise over, Darnell turned resolutely to his
mince. 'We'll have it all out after tea,' he said; 'I am not going to have my
meals spoilt by that old fool of a Nixon. Fill up my cup, will you,
dear?' 'Excellent mince this,' he went on, calmly. 'A little lemon juice and a
bit of ham in it? I thought there was something extra. Alice all right
to-day? That's good. I expect she's getting over all that nonsense.' He went on calmly chattering in a manner that astonished Mrs. Darnell,
who felt that by the fall of Uncle Robert the natural order had been
inverted, and had scarcely touched food since the intelligence had
arrived by the second post. She had started out to keep the appointment
her aunt had made early in the morning, and had spent most of the day in
a first-class waiting-room at Victoria Station, where she had heard all
the story. 'Now,' said Darnell, when the table had been cleared, 'tell us all about
it. How long has it been going on?' 'Aunt thinks now, from little things she remembers, that it must have
been going on for a year at least. She says there has been a horrid kind
of mystery about uncle's behaviour for a long time, and her nerves were
quite shaken, as she thought he must be involved with Anarchists, or
something dreadful of the sort.' 'What on earth made her think that?' 'Well, you see, once or twice when she was out walking with her husband,
she has been startled by whistles, which seemed to follow them
everywhere. You know there are some nice country walks at Barnet, and
one in particular, in the fields near Totteridge, that uncle and aunt
rather made a point of going to on fine Sunday evenings. Of course, this
was not the first thing she noticed, but, at the time, it made a great
impression on her mind; she could hardly get a wink of sleep for weeks
and weeks.' 'Whistling?' said Darnell. 'I don't quite understand. Why should she be
frightened by whistling?' 'I'll tell you. The first time it happened was one Sunday in last May. Aunt had a fancy they were being followed a Sunday or two before, but
she didn't see or hear anything, except a sort of crackling noise in the
hedge. But this particular Sunday they had hardly got through the stile
into the fields, when she heard a peculiar kind of low whistle. She took
no notice, thinking it was no concern of hers or her husband's, but as
they went on she heard it again, and then again, and it followed them
the whole walk, and it made her so uncomfortable, because she didn't
know where it was coming from or who was doing it, or why. Then, just as
they got out of the fields into the lane, uncle said he felt quite
faint, and he thought he would try a little brandy at the "Turpin's
Head," a small public-house there is there. And she looked at him and
saw his face was quite purple--more like apoplexy, as she says, than
fainting fits, which make people look a sort of greenish-white.