"Perhaps then you won't object if I find a seat? Leaning against a door
is so dull, don't you think?"
He groped forward, hands outstretched before him, stumbled against the
stairway which he sought, and sat down uncomfortably on the
next-to-the-bottom step. Then suddenly the oddness of his situation
rushed over him, and, vexed though he was with the chain of needless
circumstances which had brought him into it, he with difficulty
repressed a laugh.
An hour ago he had been lounging at peace upon the yacht, looking
forward to nothing more titillating than bed at the earliest respectable
hour. Now he was sitting with a strange lady of uncertain age in an
unlighted cottage on a lonely country road, while a howling thunderstorm
raved outside imprisoning him for nobody could say how long. In the
interval between these two extremes, he had discovered that he was a
"double," been threatened with violence, hopelessly lost Peter, and
found Mary Carstairs. Surely and in truth, a pretty active hour's work!
On the tin roof of the cottage the rain beat a wild tattoo. Within, the
silence lengthened. Under the circumstances, Varney considered reserve
on the lady's part not unnatural; but a little talk, as he viewed the
matter, would tend to help the dreary evening through.
He cleared his throat for due notice and began with a laugh.
"I was industriously chasing two men from town when the storm caught me.
You know what I mean--not drumming them out of the city, but merely
pursuing them in this general direction. I wonder if by any chance you
happened to pass them on the road?"
"N-no, I believe not."
"A very small man, very well-dressed, and a very large man, very badly
dressed, wearing a kind of curious, rococo straw hat. I know," he mused,
"that you could not have forgotten that hat. Once seen--"
"Oh!" she exclaimed with sudden evidences of interest--"do tell me--is
the smaller man you mention Mr. Hare?"
"He is indeed," he answered surprised. "You know him? Oh,
yes,--certainly! In Hunston--"
"Know him!" said she in tones of hardly suppressed indignation. "It is
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