The memory of that untraceable
echo was added to her other impressions of a furtive
sinister ``something'' that hung around Yessney.
Of Mortimer she saw very little; farm and woods and trout-
streams seemed to swallow him up from dawn till dusk. Once,
following the direction she had seen him take in the
morning, she came to an open space in a nut copse, further
shut in by huge yew trees, in the centre of which stood a
stone pedestal surmounted by a small bronze figure of a
youthful Pan. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, but
her attention was chiefly held by the fact that a newly cut
bunch of grapes had been placed as an offering at its feet.
Grapes were none too plentiful at the manor house, and
Sylvia snatched the bunch angrily from the pedestal.
Contemptuous annoyance dominated her thoughts as she
strolled slowly homeward, and then gave way to a sharp
feeling of something that was very near fright; across a
thick tangle of undergrowth a boy's face was scowling at
her, brown and beautiful, with unutterably evil eyes. It
was a lonely pathway, all pathways round Yessney were lonely
for the matter of that, and she sped forward without waiting
to give a closer scrutiny to this sudden apparition.
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