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CHAPTER XXVI
THORPE walked along, in the remoter out-of-the-way parts
of the great gardens, as the first shadows of evening
began to dull the daylight. For a long time he moved
aimlessly about, sick at heart and benumbed of mind,
in the stupid oppression of a bad dream.
There ran through all his confused thoughts the exasperating
consciousness that it was nonsense to be frightened,
or even disturbed; that, in truth, nothing whatever
had happened. But he could not lay hold of it to any
comforting purpose. Some perverse force within him
insisted on raising new phantoms in his path, and directing
his reluctant gaze to their unpleasant shapes.
Forgotten terrors pushed themselves upon his recollection.
It was as if he stood again in the Board Room, with the
telegram telling of old Tavender's death in his hands,
waiting to hear the knock of Scotland Yard upon the door.
The coming of Gafferson took on a kind of supernatural aspect,
when Thorpe recalled its circumstances. His own curious
mental ferment, which had made this present week a period
apart in his life, had begun in the very hour of this
man's approach to the house. His memory reconstructed
a vivid picture of that approach--of the old ramshackle
village trap, and the boy and the bags and the yellow
tin trunk, and that decent, red-bearded, plebeian figure,
so commonplace and yet so elusively suggestive of something
out of the ordinary.
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