But the fact didn't seem to have much to do with the person he was staring at.
And while he stared at her, she turned, and instantly perceived--he thought--that she was observed.

She paused a moment, and then made an abrupt change of direction; running round the corner of the wood, she reached the path along which he himself had just come and disappeared from view.
The whole occurrence filliped the rustic mind; but before he reached his own cottage, Stimson had hit on an explanation which satisfied him.

It was of course a stranger who had lost her way across the park, mistaking the two paths.

On seeing him, she had realized that she was wrong and had quickly set herself right.

He told his wife the tale before he went to sleep, with this commentary; and they neither of them troubled to think about it any more.
Perhaps the matter would not have appeared so simple to either of them had they known that Stimson had no sooner passed completely out of sight, leaving the wide stretches of the park empty and untenanted under a sky already alive with stars, than the same figure reappeared, and after pausing a moment, apparently to reconnoitre, disappeared within the wood.
"A year ago to-day, where were you ?" said one Brigadier to another, as the two Generals stood against the wall in the Beechmark drawing-room to watch the dancing.
"Near Albert," said the man addressed.