'Somewhere in the kitchen garden, I think,' she replied. 'That is
his favourite evening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all
that's to be said--do all there is to be done. Think of me
waiting anxiously for the end.' And she re-entered the house.

She waited in the drawing-room, watching the lights sink to
shadows, the shadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to
know what had occurred in the garden could no longer be
controlled. She passed round the shrubbery, unlatched the garden
door, and skimmed with her keen eyes the whole twilighted space
that the four walls enclosed and sheltered: they were not there.
She mounted a little ladder, which had been used for gathering
fruit, and looked over the wall into the field. This field
extended to the limits of the glebe, which was enclosed on that
side by a privet-hedge. Under the hedge was Mr. Swancourt,
walking up and down, and talking aloud--to himself, as it sounded
at first. No: another voice shouted occasional replies ; and this
interlocutor seemed to be on the other side of the hedge. The
voice, though soft in quality, was not Stephen's.

The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of
an old manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate
attached, had lately been purchased by a person named Troyton,
whom Elfride had never seen. Her father might have struck up an
acquaintanceship with some member of that family through the
privet-hedge, or a stranger to the neighbourhood might have
wandered thither.

Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him.