"Dear God!" she said in a shaking whisper as she plucked at Cleek's sleeve. "She does not know, she does not understand. She is asleep, Mr. Cleek!"
"Yes," he made answer. "You know now why she looked so haggard and weary this morning, despite her assurance that she had slept well. Poor little woman; poor unhappy little woman! A sleep-walker, Clavering--and going back where her heart leads her: to the cottage where she had often spent those happier days when she was so sure of love and of you!"
Geoff did not reply; he could not. As if the sight of that slow-moving figure, linked with the realization which had now come upon him, had wrought a curious numbing effect upon mind and heart alike, he simply stood there, breathing hard, and looked, and looked, and looked, but said no single word. Even Dollops could see that there was a glint of something wet and shining in the crease beside his eye, and that, in spite of tears, he smiled as a man might smile if he had waked to find that all the world was his. It was Ailsa that made the first sound, spoke the first word.
"Oh, Mr. Cleek, to think that she should be a somnambulist," she said with a little catch in her voice, as if she were laughing and sobbing at the same time and fighting hard to do neither. "And to think that you should have guessed it when even I, her dearest and closest friend, never suspected it for an instant."
"Oh, as for that, Miss Lorne, I really deserve very little credit indeed," he made answer.
For a moment he followed with his eyes the departing figure of Lady Katharine as it moved fleetly along the path to the stable quarters, where stood the stile giving access to the paddock and thence, by a far-away wall door, to the waste land of the open country beyond.
"If anybody is to be praised for the discovery of the truth as manifested to-night," he went on presently, "that praise should go to Loisette alone. He has said--that wise Frenchman--that 'the likeness of events acting upon a highly strung and overwrought mind is likely to produce exactly similar results.' There is his vindication before you. Last night all hope of happiness was smitten out of that poor girl's mind by the affair at Clavering Close and the certainty that she had lost the man she loves forever. This morning new hope came; this evening that new hope was dashed to earth again by her interview with this dear boy, and the future looked blacker and more hopeless than ever. The 'likeness of events' had come; there is the 'likeness of result' before you. Back into her ball dress, back into her cloak, back into everything that had to do with that other time; there she goes now back to Gleer Cottage as well!"
