She raised her head, and met Philippa's gaze. A look of intense surprise and bewilderment came over her face; she started forward, and as she did so she caught her foot on some unnoticed stone, stumbled, and almost fell. Philippa made a movement towards her, but immediately the stranger recovered herself.
"You," she said, in a quick low tone, almost as if she was speaking unconsciously, her eyes all the while fixed in a curious, scrutinising stare upon Philippa's face. The girl showed no astonishment. There seemed no room for astonishment in the world of strange happenings in which she found herself, but before she could reply the woman spoke again.
"I am not mad, as you might easily imagine," she said. "Please forgive me, but--will you tell me who you are?"
"My name is Harford--Philippa Harford."
The other nodded. It was evidently the answer she had expected.
"For a moment I took you for--some one I used to know many years ago. Of course it is quite impossible that it should be her, but coming upon you suddenly like this surprised me out of my senses."
She was a tall, angular woman of what is sometimes called uncertain age, that is to say, she might have been anything from thirty to five-and-forty. She was dressed in a simple gown of brown holland, and it was singularly unbecoming to one of her complexion, for her hair was a faded, nondescript colour which might possibly have been red in early youth, and her skin was sallow and colourless.
Her face could not, even by the most charitable, have been called anything but plain--the cheekbones were high, the features rugged, the eyes small and light; but Philippa noted something very attractive in the expression. There was cleverness in the broad low brow under the wide-brimmed hat so deplorably innocent of all suggestion of prevailing fashion, and a whimsical twist about the corners of the mouth which showed its possessor to be rich in humour. And yet it was a sad face--in some indefinite way it suggested patience and expectancy. Just now the eyes were wistful, questioning.
"It must have been a relation of yours, I think," she was saying, "because her name was Philippa Harford too." It was an assertion, but Philippa answered the eyes rather than the words.
"She was my aunt."
"How the years go by, don't they?" The stranger seemed to be trying to lead the conversation away from the personal. "And one really doesn't notice their passing. One lies on the shelf and gets dusty as the world goes on. Are you going this way? May I walk with you? This is an unconventional meeting. Will you count it sufficient introduction that I knew your aunt many years ago? My name is Isabella Vernon, but that probably conveys nothing to you."