To hear all. that could
be heard, it was necessary to keep both doors open, and quite
imperative not to talk. The damp night air of April filled the
place, and crept through our evening clothes and light overcoats
into the very marrow; the mental torture of the situation was
renewed and multiplied in my brain; and all. the time one's ears
were pricked for footsteps on the path between the rhododendrons.
The only sounds we could at first identify came one and all. from
the stables. Yet there the excitement subsided sooner than we
had expected, and it was Raffles himself who breathed a doubt as
to whether they were turning out the hunters after all. On the
other hand, we heard wheels in the drive not long after midnight;
and Raffles, who was beginning to scout among the shrubberies,
stole back to tell me that the guests were departing, and being
sped, with an unimpaired conviviality which he failed to understand.
I said I could not understand it either, but suggested the general
influence of liquor, and expressed my envy of their state. I had
drawn my knees up to my chin, on the bench where one used to dry
one's self after bathing, and there I sat in a seeming stolidity
at utter variance with my inward temper.
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