His face lighted wonderfully. "It's extraordinary," he said; "she's
better. Miles better. In fact, if it was not tempting Providence, I
should say she was well. She's been, for the last week anyhow, a perfect
angel."
His amazed, uncomprehending look gave her the clue to what had
happened. It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way
it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw
now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so
wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if she, Bella, had
been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not
and never had been.
His next utterance came to her with no irrelevance.
"You've been found out."
For a moment she wondered, had he guessed it then, her secret? He had
never known anything about it, and it was not likely that he should know
now. He was indeed very far from knowing when he could think that it was
seeing her that did it.
There was, of course, the other secret, the fact that he did see her;
but she had never allowed that it was a secret, or that it need be,
although they guarded it so carefully. Anybody except Bella, who
wouldn't understand it, was welcome to know that he came to see her. He
must mean that.
"Found out?" she repeated.
"If you haven't been, you will be."
"You mean," she said, "Sarratt End has been found out?"
"If you put it that way. I saw the Powells at the station."
(She breathed freely.)
"They told me they'd taken rooms at some farm here."
"Which farm?"
He didn't remember.
"Was it Woodman's Farm?" she asked. And he said, Yes, that was the name
they'd told him. Whereabouts was it?
"Don't you know?" she said. "That's the name of _your_ Farm."
He had not known it, and was visibly annoyed at knowing it now. And
Agatha herself felt some dismay. If it had been any other place but
Woodman's Farm! It stared at them; it watched them; it knew all their
goings out and their comings in; it knew Rodney; not that that had
mattered in the least, but the Powells, when they came, would know too.
She tried to look as if that didn't matter, either, while they faced
each other in a silence, a curious, unfamiliar discomposure.