The effect of Laurence's confession of love on Lena in fiction would doubtless have been the dramatic and time-honoured remark on the "suddenness" of the declaration, but this was not the reception she gave to the young man's passionate outburst.
"Laurence," she said, and the pronunciation by her lips of his Christian name thrilled him with pleasure, "Laurence, when the mystery is solved, when you return safe from your interview to-day, then, and not till then, will I give you my answer."
She paused to catch her breath. With difficulty she had been able to pronounce the words that in cold print appear more formal and unsatisfactory than they seemed to Laurence, intoned as they were by the gentle voice of the woman he loved.
For the moment she was transformed from a laughing, vivacious girl to a silent and thoughtful woman.
How much in her own opinion the coming visit to Durley Dene meant to her she alone knew. She dared not betray her love for her new companion, though it was manifest in her eyes as she glanced at him; then, looking down, interested herself in the progress of a worm on the turf. What was the secret that might—that probably would—be revealed in a few brief hours? Since it seemed that a woman was concerned, might not the grim skeleton in the cupboard prove to be a disgraceful as well as a gruesome one? And then? How often are not the sins of the fathers visited upon the innocent children?
And that was why she paused and refused her answer. Had not the lover been blind, as is the love-god himself, he would have read that answer as plainly as though it had been given in words. But Laurence, at any rate, felt he could not be discouraged. He had not been met with a blank refusal.
He caught Lena's little ungloved hand, bent down, and kissed it tenderly.
And as he did so the gong sounded for lunch, and they made their way back to the house, where they met the Squire for the first time that day in the dining-room. The old man's spirits contained something of their old joviality. At the meal he was once more, to some slight extent, the courteous, old-fashioned host and gentleman that he had been a few months back. Laurence heartily rejoiced at the change in his father's behaviour. Lena noticed it too. Mrs. Knox might perhaps have done so also had the viands been less palatable or her appetite less hearty. The cause of the transformation was unknown to any of them, but Laurence guessed very rightly that the Squire's dread of his strange enemy had been lessened by the fact that no second attack had been attempted. As a matter of fact, Mr. Carrington was beginning to hope that his assailant of two days ago had departed under the impression that the victim had been killed by the cowardly shot fired into the coach as it crossed the moor.
Had he been able to glance into the mysterious future and learn what the events of the coming night were to be, it is possible that his behaviour would have been very different.