d figure whose exquisite grace and symmetry
even her long cloak could not wholly hide. She was not, perhaps,
a strictly beautiful woman. There were defects in her which were
sufficiently marked to show themselves in the fading light. Her hair,
for example, seen under the large garden hat that she wore, looked
almost as short as the hair of a man; and the color of it was of that
dull, lusterless brown hue which is so commonly seen in English women
of the ordinary type. Still, in spite of these drawbacks, there was a
latent charm in her expression, there was an inbred fascination in her
manner, which instantly found its way to my sympathies and its hold on
my admiration. She won me in the moment when I first looked at her.

"May I inquire if you have lost your way?" I asked.

Her eyes rested on my face with a strange look of inquiry in them. She
did not appear to be surprised or confused at my venturing to address
her.

"I know this part of the country well," I went on. "Can I be of any use
to you?"

She still looked at me with steady, inquiring eyes. For a moment,
stranger as I was, my face seemed to trouble her as if it had been a
face that she had seen and forgotten again. If she really had this idea,
she at once dismissed it with a little toss of her head, and looked away
at the river as if she felt no further interest in me.

"Thank you. I have not lost my way. I am accustomed to walking alone.
Good-evening."

She spoke coldly, but courteously. Her voice was delicious; her bow, as
she left me, was the perfection of unaffected grace. She left the bridge
on the side by which I had first seen her approach it, and walked slowly
away along the darkening track of the highroad.

Still I was not quite satisfied. There was something underlying the
charming expression and the fascinating manner which my instinct felt
to be something wrong. As I walked away toward the opposite end of the
bridge, the doubt began to grow on me whether she had spoken the truth.
In leaving the neighborhood of the river, was she simply trying to get
rid of me?

I at once resolved to put this suspicion of her to the test. Leaving the
bridge, I had only to cross the road beyond, and to enter a plantation
on the bank of the river. Here, concealed behind the first tree which
was large enough to hide me, I could command a view of the bridge, and I
could fairly count on detecting her, if she returned to the river, while
there was a ray of light