Then without a word she lifted the flowers, and, holding herself unusually erect, the slim white figure proceeded down the walk that led towards the old bowling-green.
Wynyard, as he stood watching her, asked himself, Was she also passing out of his life? In another moment a yew hedge had hid her from his eyes.
“I believe I’ve done it now!” he muttered. “I could not help it; she knows, and is ready to kill me for my presumption! She will tell her aunts, and I shall get the sack.”
He picked up a small blossom that Aurea had dropped on the sundial, opened his watch, and carefully placed the little flower along with the little photograph. When people are in love, what irrational follies tempt them!
CHAPTER XXII
AUREA’S REFLECTIONS
But Aurea had no intention of “telling her aunts”; on the contrary, she crossed the old bowling-green in order to avoid the Manor, and returned home across the meadows that led by Claringbold’s Farm. In the dim hall of the Rectory she encountered Norris—who, of an afternoon, often haunted that vicinity—and said, as she handed her the flowers—
“Will you please fill the church vases? I’ve rather a headache from the sun.”
The girl really did feel considerably dazed and bewildered, and passed into the drawing-room, where she ruthlessly dislodged Mac from her own particular pet chair. Mac vacated the seat with an air of injured deliberation, found another, and sighed as heavily as if he were a human being.
The time had come for thinking things out, and his mistress, having seated herself, prepared to hold a court of inquiry on Aurea Morven. One would suppose that she really had had a sunstroke like poor Captain Ramsay! What mad impulse had urged her to question the chauffeur? At the moment, she seemed to be listening to another personality speaking by her lips. She felt a fluttering in her throat as she told herself that this inscrutable young man was certainly in love with her. Behold, she summoned her evidence! The photograph in the watch, the village concert, when, after a rousing camp song, he had given, as an encore, “I’ll sing thee songs of Araby”; she believed that the words were addressed to herself, that the singer was pouring out his soul to her. Possibly other girls shared her conviction, and had taken it to their tender and palpitating hearts. When the last note had died away in a ringing silence, Ottinge recognised a gentleman’s song and a gentleman’s voice; after a pause of astonishment, there came a storm of belated clapping and applause, and one or two timid female voices were heard to cry out “Encore!” Some of the rustic audience grinned, and declared that the words were no good, and damned nonsense, but the tune was pretty enough; it was whistled in the street within the week.
Aurea summed up the photograph, the song, and the recent interview by the sundial; the recollection of Owen’s voice, the look in his extremely expressive grey eyes, set her heart beating. At the same time she blamed herself for her amazing indiscretion. She, who had lately avoided this gentleman chauffeur at choir practice, at the Manor, and in the village—she, who knew that he treasured her photo, to actually accost him in the garden, and demand what he meant by remaining in Ottinge!