The woman lifted her hand to her lips—­touched them—­and shook her head.

“Dumb?”

The woman bowed her head.

“Who are you?”

The woman wrote on her slate, and handed it to him over the pear-trees. 
He read:—­“I am the cook.”

“Well, cook, were you born dumb?”

The woman shook her head.

“What struck you dumb?”

The woman wrote on her slate:—­“A blow.”

“Who gave you the blow?”

She shook her head.

“Won’t you tell me?”

She shook her head again.

Her eyes had rested on his face while he was questioning her; staring at him, cold, dull, and changeless as the eyes of a corpse.  Firm as his nerves were—­dense as he was, on all ordinary occasions, to any thing in the shape of an imaginative impression—­the eyes of the dumb cook slowly penetrated him with a stealthy inner chill.  Something crept at the marrow of his back, and shuddered under the roots of his hair.  He felt a sudden impulse to get away from her.  It was simple enough; he had only to say good-morning, and go on.  He did say good-morning—­but he never moved.  He put his hand into his pocket, and offered her some money, as a way of making her go.  She stretched out her hand across the pear-trees to take it—­and stopped abruptly, with her arm suspended in the air.  A sinister change passed over the deathlike tranquillity of her face.  Her closed lips slowly dropped apart.  Her dull eyes slowly dilated; looked away, sideways, from his eyes; stopped again; and stared, rigid and glittering, over his shoulder—­stared as if they saw a sight of horror behind him.  “What the devil are you looking at?” he asked—­and turned round quickly, with a start.  There was neither person nor thing to be seen behind him.  He turned back again to the woman.  The woman had left him, under the influence of some sudden panic.  She was hurrying away from him—­running, old as she was—­flying the sight of him, as if the sight of him was the pestilence.

“Mad!” he thought—­and turned his back on the sight of her.

He found himself (hardly knowing how he had got there) under the walnut-tree once more.  In a few minutes his hardy nerves had recovered themselves—­he could laugh over the remembrance of the strange impression that had been produced on him.  “Frightened for the first time in my life,” he thought—­“and that by an old woman!  It’s time I went into training again, when things have come to this!”

He looked at his watch.  It was close on the luncheon hour up at the house; and he had not decided yet what to do about his letter to Anne.  He resolved to decide, then and there.

The woman—­the dumb woman, with the stony face and the horrid eyes—­reappeared in his thoughts, and got in the way of his decision.  Pooh! some crazed old servant, who might once have been cook; who was kept out of charity now.  Nothing more important than that.  No more of her! no more of her!