"Ah!" said Rosamond.—It was a tender cry, as if she had taken something very lovely to her heart and was holding it close. With an abrupt movement Bethune turned back to his table; his harsh face looked harsher and more unemotional than usual, and he began folding up his papers as if he thought the conversation had lasted long enough.
"Perhaps to-morrow," he said, "you will be able to give me the beginning of the siege papers."
"I will try," said Rosamond, catching her breath. And then, after a moment, she rose and left him without another word.
* * * * *
Rosamond felt restless; the walls of the house oppressed her; the sound of the piano in the drawing-room was maddening; she wanted to be out in the wide spaces with her overwhelming thoughts. She caught up a cape, drew the hood over her head, and went quickly forth to meet the December wind.
Down the grass-grown avenues, under the bereft and complaining orchard trees, she went, making for the downs. At the boundary gate she met the old one-armed postman toiling with his burden. He thrust a letter into her hand and passed on. She saw that it was addressed in Sir Arthur's writing, and bore the stamp of Melbury. She broke it open and read impatiently, eager to be back with her absorbing dream. Her husband was urgently summoning her to join him at once, under Lady Aspasia's roof. He expressed surprise, tinged with dissatisfaction, that Lady Aspasia's kind letter of invitation to her should have remained unanswered.
"No doubt, dear," Sir Arthur wrote, "you are waiting until you can ascertain the date of your visitor's departure, but this must not be allowed to interfere." Here was a command. Rosamond gave a vague laugh.
"Who is the guest, by the way? I am expecting a letter from you, forwarded from London. Probably you have written to Claridge's. I would gladly accede to your request and come at once to the manor-house...." She stared, as the phrase caught her eyes, then laughed again: "Poor man—what was he thinking of?"
She crumpled the sheet in her hand and walked on. The wind blew fiercely across the downs, every leaf and spray, every dry gorse-bush, every blade of rank grass was writhen and bent in the same direction. She struggled to the shelter of a hazel copse and sat her down.
Before her stretched the moorland, dun-grey and yellow, dipping to the horizon; above her head the sky was leaden grey, charged with cloud wrack—a huge bowl of storm. She thought of that glowing Indian morning, when he had told her he must leave her, and of the twenty-four hours that had elapsed between that moment and their parting. What tenderness, gentler than a woman's, had he not revealed to her then—Harry English, the hard man, fierce angel-leader of devils! And the words of Browning rushed back upon her, once again as a message of balm—