In about three minutes she appeared in sight without a veil. He discovered, as she drew nearer, a difficulty which had not struck him at first--that it is not an easy matter to particularize the colour of a stranger's eyes in a merely casual encounter on a path out of doors. That Mrs. Manston must be brought close to him, and not only so, but to look closely at him, if his purpose were to be accomplished.
He shaped a plan. It might by chance be effectual; if otherwise, it would not reveal his intention to her. When Mrs. Manston was within speaking distance, he went up to her and said--'Will you kindly tell me which turning will take me to Casterbridge?'
'The second on the right,' said Mrs. Manston.
Owen put on a blank look: he held his hand to his ear--conveying to the lady the idea that he was deaf.
She came closer and said more distinctly--'The second turning on the right.'
Owen flushed a little. He fancied he had beheld the revelation he was in search of. But had his eyes deceived him?
Once more he used the ruse, still drawing nearer and intimating by a glance that the trouble he gave her was very distressing to him.
'How very deaf!' she murmured. She exclaimed loudly--'THE SECOND TURNING TO THE RIGHT.'
She had advanced her face to within a foot of his own, and in speaking mouthed very emphatically, fixing her eyes intently upon his. And now his first suspicion was indubitably confirmed. Her eyes were as black as midnight.
All this feigning was most distasteful to Graye. The riddle having been solved, he unconsciously assumed his natural look before she had withdrawn her face. She found him to be peering at her as if he would read her very soul--expressing with his eyes the notification of which, apart from emotion, the eyes are more capable than any other---inquiry.
Her face changed its expression--then its colour. The natural tint of the lighter portions sank to an ashy gray; the pink of her cheeks grew purpler. It was the precise result which would remain after blood had left the face of one whose skin was dark, and artificially coated with pearl-powder and carmine.
She turned her head and moved away, murmuring a hasty reply to Owen's farewell remark of 'Good-day,' and with a kind of nervous twitch lifting her hand and smoothing her hair, which was of a light-brown colour.
'She wears false hair,' he thought, 'or has changed its colour artificially. Her true hair matched her eyes.'
And now, in spite of what Mr. Brown's neighbours had said about nearly recognizing Mrs. Manston on her recent visit--which might have meant anything or nothing; in spite of the photograph, and in spite of his previous incredulity; in consequence of the verse, of her silence and backwardness at the visit to Hoxton with Manston, and of her appearance and distress at the present moment, Graye had a conviction that the woman was an impostor.
What could be Manston's reason for such an astounding trick he could by no stretch of imagination divine.
He changed his direction as soon as the woman was out of sight, and plodded along the lanes homeward to Tolchurch.
One new idea was suggested to him by his desire to allay Cytherea's dread of being claimed, and by the difficulty of believing that the first Mrs. Manston lost her life as supposed, notwithstanding the inquest and verdict. Was it possible that the real Mrs. Manston, who was known to be a Philadelphian by birth, had returned by the train to London, as the porter had said, and then left the country under an assumed name, to escape that worst kind of widowhood--the misery of being wedded to a fickle, faithless, and truant husband?
In her complicated distress at the news brought by her brother, Cytherea's thoughts at length reverted to her friend, the Rector of Carriford. She told Owen of Mr. Raunham's warm-hearted behaviour towards herself, and of his strongly expressed wish to aid her.
'He is not only a good, but a sensible man. We seem to want an old head on our side.'
'And he is a magistrate,' said Owen in a tone of concurrence. He thought, too, that no harm could come of confiding in the rector, but there was a difficulty in bringing about the confidence. He wished that his sister and himself might both be present at an interview with Mr. Raunham, yet it would be unwise for them to call on him together, in the sight of all the servants and parish of Carriford.
There could be no objection to their writing him a letter.
No sooner was the thought born than it was carried out. They wrote to him at once, asking him to have the goodness to give them some advice they sadly needed, and begging that he would accept their assurance that there was a real justification for the additional request they made--that instead of their calling upon him, he would any evening of the week come to their cottage at Tolchurch.
2. MARCH THE TWENTIETH. SIX TO NINE O'CLOCK P.M.
Two evenings later, to the total disarrangement of his dinner-hour, Mr. Raunham appeared at Owen's door. His arrival was hailed with genuine gratitude. The horse was tied to the palings, and the rector ushered indoors and put into the easy-chair.
Then Graye told him the whole story, reminding him that their first suspicions had been of a totally different nature, and that in endeavouring to obtain proof of their truth they had stumbled upon marks which had surprised them into these new uncertainties, thrice as marvellous as the first, yet more prominent.
Cytherea's heart was so full of anxiety that it superinduced a manner of confidence which was a death-blow to all formality. Mr. Raunham took her hand pityingly.
'It is a serious charge,' he said, as a sort of original twig on which his thoughts might precipitate themselves.
