“Madam,” he said, “I heard you express some anxiety about your attendants. Our young friend is about to fulfil your request … whatever it may be.—Go,” added he, turning upon the disconcerted youth. And as Farrant hesitated he took a swift step nearer to him, and whispered in his turn, “Go—to the devil or where you will, so long as it is out of this!”
His eye commanded more insolently yet than his words. The young man fell back, flung a look of hesitation toward the crumpled notes on the table; another glance at the lady, his fair treasure-trove. Then, with a meaning smile, he bowed profoundly, so that all his shining curls fell over his face, and withdrew.
Rockhurst caught the smile and the look; and the memory of a dead face, that of his old brother in arms, the boy’s father, in its last stern serenity rose up before him. His own eyes were hard as he looked again upon the woman who had been found so promptly willing to come and relieve the tedium of his snow-bound evening.
The single contemptuous exclamation fell like the cut of a whip.
Diana Harcourt, with the return of physical comfort about her, had begun to feel a strange uneasiness gather in her mind. Country-bred, and country-wed to an old man who had little taste for company, she had yet had some opportunities of learning the way of courts; she, for instance, had no doubt that the youth who had saved her from the snow was of gentle birth, and that this grave-looking being, with whom she now found herself alone in the strange, silent house, was a very fine gentleman indeed. Nevertheless, something singular, something not quite open, clandestine almost, in the situation began to force itself upon her. What was the relationship between these two men? The eyes of the elder, who might have been the other’s father, were cold to dislike as he had gazed upon him. And the young man’s febrile excitement came back upon her memory with an impression of distaste amounting to repulsion. What had lurked behind his smile, his furtive, appraising glance? She recalled how innocently she had allowed him to touch her feet, and, flushing hotly, she cast her mantle over them and turned her head with a little movement, at once dignified and shy, to gaze upon Rockhurst. But suspicion fell from her on the instant.—Noble-looking, grave, high-bred, old enough to be her own father, what could she have to fear?
“Sir,” she said boldly, “will you not have the kindness now to tell me where I am, and with whom?”
Rockhurst drew up a chair and sat him down, deliberately facing her. Then he crossed his fine white hands upon his knee, letting his eyes rest upon hers.
“Madam,” he said at last, “do you not hear how the wind begins again to moan outside? I warrant you, behind the thick walls of this old house the snow is whirling in great white drifts. It must be parlous cold without. Here, madam, the firelight is rosy; do you not think we are very well together? ’Tis a quaint hour, stolen from dull old Time’s grudging casket. We do not know each other—why, that has a marvellous charm of its own! Let us not dispel it. We may never meet again; and to-morrow you go back … to the white snow. And I to the fever of the town. And that, perhaps, will be well, too.”