“She seems a very quiet sort of girl to me,” said Miss Grant. But if she could have known what was going on about two hundred yards behind her, she might have altered her opinion.
CHAPTER XII.
MR. BLAKE BREAKS HIS ENGAGEMENT.
On Monday, Hugh, Poss, and Binjie had to go out to an outlying paddock to draft a lot of station-sheep from a mob of travelling-sheep. As this meant a long, hard job, the three breakfasted by candlelight—a good old fashion, this, but rather forgotten lately—and Blake also turned out for early breakfast, as he wanted to get his drive to Tarrong over while the weather was cool. Of the women-folk, Ellen alone was up, boiling eggs, and making tea on a spirit-lamp; laughing and chattering meanwhile, and keeping them all amused; while outside in the frosty dawn, the stable boy shivered as he tightened the girths round the ribs of three very touchy horses. Poss and Binjie were each riding a station horse to “take the flashness out of him,” and Binjie’s horse tried to buck him off, but might as well have tried to shed his own skin; so he bolted instead, and disappeared with a snort and a rattle of hoofs over the hill. The others followed, with their horses very much inclined to go through the same performance.
After they had gone, Ellen Harriott and Blake were left alone in the breakfast-room. Outside, the heedless horse-boy was harnessing Blake’s ponies; but inside no one but themselves was awake, and as he finished his breakfast, Ellen stepped up to the table and blew out the two candles, leaving the room in semi-darkness. She caught his hand, and he drew her to him. It was what she had been waiting for all night. She had pictured a parting, which was to be such sweet sorrow. Blake had also pictured it to himself, but in quite a different way.
He was determined to make an end of his engagement (or entanglement, whichever it could be called), and yet when the chance came he almost put it off; but the thought of what exposure and disgrace would mean, if his affairs were investigated, drove him on.
He stroked her hair for a while in silence, and then, with a laugh, said, “We’ll have to give up this sort of thing, you know; it’ll be getting you talked about, and that’ll never do.”
She hardly knew what he meant. Having lived so long in a fool’s paradise, she could not realise that her world was coming down about her ears.
“We’ll have to be proper in future,” he said. “I’ve had the most fiendish run of bad luck lately, and it’s just as well there never was any engagement between us. It would have had to come to nothing.”
She drew back, and looked at him with frightened eyes. He had great power over her—this big, masterful man, whom she had looked upon as her lover; and she could not believe that a little trouble about money could really make any difference to him. She believed him able to overcome any such difficulty as that of earning a living for her and himself.
“But, Gavan,” she said, “what have I done?”