think, he thought, he felt almost certain, that it had come from an animal.  He shuddered.  Always temperamentally averse from any fierce demonstrations of feeling, always instinctively restrained, careful and intelligently conventional, he was painfully startled and moved by this terrible outcry which could only have been caused by intense agony.  As he believed that the cry had come from an animal, he naturally supposed that the agony which had caused it was physical.  He was a very humane man, and as soon as he had mastered the feeling of cold horror which had for a moment held him rigid, he hastened on to the door of Little Cloisters and pulled the bell.  After a pause which seemed to him long the door was opened by Annie, Rosamund’s parlor-maid.  She presented to Mr. Darlington’s peering gaze a face full of ignorance and fear.

“What is the matter?” he asked, in a hesitating voice.

“Sir?” said Annie.

“What has happened in the garden?”

“Nothing, sir, that I know of.  I have been in the house.”  She paused, then added, with a sort of timorous defiance:  “I’m not one as would listen, sir.”

“Then you didn’t hear it?”

“Hear what, sir?”

Her question struck upon Mr. Darlington’s native conventionality, and made him conscious of the fact that, perhaps almost indiscreetly, he was bandying words with a maid-servant.  He put up one hand to his beard, pulled at it, and then said, almost in his usual voice: 

“Is Mrs. Leith in?”

“She’s in the garden, sir.”

“In the garden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is—­is Mr. Leith at home?”

“He’s just come home, sir, and gone to Mrs. Leith in the garden.”

Mr. Darlington stood for a moment pulling his beard and raising and lowering his eyebrows.  Then he said doubtfully: 

“Thank you.  I won’t disturb them now.  I shall be here with Canon Wilton at half-past seven.”

Annie stood staring at him in silence.

“They—­Mr. and Mrs. Leith expect us, I believe?” added Mr. Darlington.

“They haven’t said anything to the contrary, sir.”

“No?”

Slowly Mr. Darlington turned away, slowly he disappeared into the darkness; his head was bent, and he looked older than usual.  Annie gazed after him.  Once she opened her lips as if she were going to call him back, but no sound came from them.

“Annie!  Annie!” cried a voice in the house behind her.

She turned sharply and confronted Robin’s nurse.

“Where’s Master Robin?” said the nurse, almost fiercely.

“I don’t know.  He hasn’t come back with master.”

“I’m going into the garden,” said the nurse.

“For God’s sake, don’t!” said Annie.

“Why not?” asked the nurse.

Suddenly Annie began to cry.  The nurse pulled her in and shut the door of the house.

CHAPTER X