“Good morning.”

 

The man’s accent struck her. She said to herself, with amusement:

 

“He’s Irish!”

 

Audrey had left the astonished but dispassionate gardener at the hedge, and was now emerging from the scanty³ and dishevelled plantation⁴ close to the boundary wall of the estate. She supposed that the police must have been on her track and on the track of Jane Foley, and that by some mysterious skill they had hunted her down. But she did not care. She was not in the least afraid. The sudden vision of a jail did not affright her. On the contrary her chief sensation was one of joyous⁵ self-confidence, which sensation had been produced in her by the remarks and the attitude of Musa. She had always known that she was both shy and adventurous⁶, and that the two qualities were mutually contradictory⁷; but now it appeared to her that diffidence had been destroyed, and that that change which she had ever longed for in her constitution had at least really come to pass.

 

“You don’t seem very surprised to see me,” said Audrey.

 

“Well, madam,” said the detective, “I’m not paid to be surprised—in my business.”

 

He had raised his hat. He was standing⁸ on the dyke⁹, and from that height he looked somewhat down upon Audrey leaning against the wall. The watercourse and the strip of eternally emerald-green grass separated them. Though neither tall nor particularly handsome, he was a personable man, with a ready smile and alert,

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