made
him uneasy, yet he saw no way of abandoning it with decorum.

As the two, standing in a silence full of tacit constraint, looked
aimlessly away from the terrace, they saw at the same instant a vehicle
with a single horse coming rather briskly up the driveway, some hundreds
of yards below. It was recognizable at once as the local trap from
Punsey station, and as usual it was driven by a boy from the village.
Seated beside this lad was a burly, red-bearded man in respectable
clothes, who, to judge from the tin-box and travelling-bags fastened on
behind, seemed coming to High Thorpe to stay.

"Who on earth is that?" asked Thorpe, wonderingly. The man was obviously
of the lower class, yet there seemed something about him which invited
recognition.

"Presumably it's the new head-gardener," she replied with brevity.

Her accent recalled to Thorpe the fact that there had been something
disagreeable in their conversation, and the thought of it was unpleasant
to him. "Why, I didn't know you had a new man coming," he said, turning
to her with an overture of smiling interest.

"Yes," she answered, and then, as if weighing the proffered propitiation
and rejecting it, turned slowly and went into the house.

The trap apparently ended its course at some back entrance: he did not
see it again. He strolled indoors, after a little, and told his man to
pack a bag for London, and order the stanhope to take him to the train.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN the early morning, long before any of the hotel people had made
themselves heard moving about, Thorpe got up.

It was a long time since he had liked himself and his surroundings so
little. The bed seemed all right to the eye, and even to the touch, but
he had slept very badly in it, none the less. The room was luxuriously
furnished, as was the entire suite, but it was all strange and
uncomfortable to his senses. The operation of shaving and dressing in
solitude produced an oppression of loneliness. He regretted not having
brought his man with him for this reason, and then, upon meditation, for
other reasons. A person of his position ought always to have a servant
with him. The hotel people must have been surprised at his travelling
unattended--and the people at High Thorpe must also have thought it
strange. It flashed across his mind that no doubt his wife had most of
all thought it strange. How would she explain to herself his sudden,
precipitate journey to London alone? Might