"Try to forget?" If she only could!
[CHAPTER XLII]
A minute or two later Rosemary was startled out of her day-dream by the sound of Jasper's voice calling to her from somewhere in the near distance. She had barely time to obliterate the traces of tears from her eyes and cheeks before he appeared round the bend of the path. The next moment he was by her side. Apparently he had been running, for he seemed breathless and not quite so trim and neat in his appearance as he usually was.
"I heard a scream," were the first words he said, as soon as he came in sight of her. "It terrified me when I recognised your voice. Thank God you are safe!"
He was obviously exhausted and, for him, strangely agitated. He threw himself down on the carpet of moss at her feet; then he seized her hand and covered it with kisses. "Thank God!" he kept on murmuring. "Thank God you are safe!"
Then suddenly he looked up at her with an inquiring frown. "But what made you scream?" he asked.
Rosemary by now had regained control over her nerves. She succeeded in disengaging her hand, and in smiling quite coolly down upon him.
"It was very stupid of me," she said, with a light laugh. "I saw a pair of eyes looking at me through the undergrowth. It startled me. I thought that it was a wild cat—I had heard that there were some in these parts—but it was only a homely one."
She tried to rise, but Jasper had recaptured her hand. He was engaged, in kissing her finger-tips one by one, lingering over each kiss as if to savour its sweetness in full. Now he looked up at her with a glance of hungering passion. Rosemary felt herself flushing. She was conscious of an intense feeling of pity for this man who had lavished on her all the love of which he was capable, and hungered for that which she was not able to give. He looked care-worn, she thought, and weary.
"You were not anxious about me, Jasper, were you?" she asked kindly.