Near the corner of one of these terraces, a little green weather-cocked summer-house stands boldly facing the regattas in their season, and beyond it again are a steep bank and some steps to a second terrace, from whence there is the side-door leading to the boats.
On this particular evening Frank Raban came quietly zigzagging along these terraces, perhaps with some vague hope of meeting Dorothea on her return.
There are some years of one's life when one is less alive than at others, as there are different degrees of strength and power to live in the course of the same existence. Frank was not in the despairing state in which we first knew him, but he was not yet as other people are, and in hours of depression such as this, he was used to feel lonely and apart. He was used to see other people happy, anxious, busy, hurrying after one another, and he would look on as now, with his hands in his pockets, not indifferent, but feeling as if Fate had put him down solitary and silent, into the world—a dumb note (so he used to think) in the great music. And yet he knew that the music was there—that mighty human vibration which exists independent of all the dumb notes, cracked instruments, rifted lutes, and broken lyres of which we hear so much, and he had but to open his ears to it.
Two voices, anything but dumb, were talking inside the little summer-house. Raban had scarcely noticed them as he came along, listening with the vaguest curiosity, as people do, to reproaches and emotions which do not concern them; but presently, as he approached the summer-house, a tone struck him familiarly, and at the same instant he saw a dark figure rush wildly from the little wooden house, and leap right over the side of the terrace on to the path below; and then Frank recognised the frantic action—it could only be George. A moment afterwards a woman—he knew her too—came out of the summer-house and stood for an instant panting against the doorway, leaning with her two hands against the lintel. She looked pale, troubled; her hair was pushed back from her white face; her eyes looked dark, beautiful. Never before had Raban seen Rhoda (for it was Rhoda) so moved. When she saw him a faint flush came into her cheeks. She came forward a few steps, then she stopped short again.
She was dragging her silk mantle, which had fallen off. One end was trailing after her along the gravel.
'Mr. Raban, is that you?' she said, in an agitated way. 'Why did you come? Is it—is it nearly time to go? Is Mrs. Palmer come back? Oh, please take me to her!' And then she suddenly burst into tears, and the long black silk mantle fell to the ground as she put out two fluttering hands.
Raban had flung his cigar over the terrace after George.
'What is it?' he said, anxiously. 'Can I help you in any way? What has happened?'
The young man spoke kindly, but in his usual matter-of-fact voice; and Rhoda, even in her distress, wondered at his coldness. No one before ever responded so calmly to whom she had appealed.
'Oh, you don't know,' she said; 'I can't tell you.' And the poor little hands went up again with a desperate gesture.