The days that followed were tolerably uncomfortable for all concerned. Violet sulked. She was an adept in the art of putting on an air of outraged innocence, and managed to make everybody supremely uncomfortable accordingly. She kept to her room as much as she conveniently could, and when she did venture out she shunned Marian’s companionship, taking her solitary wanderings in secluded places. Her hostess, angered and disgusted, after one or two further attempts at reasoning with her, fell in with her mood, and left her severely to herself. But kind-hearted Chris—with whom she had always been a great favourite—persisted in declaring that she was not the one to blame in the matter—that she was rather deserving of sympathy—and he accordingly was the only one to whom she condescended to unbend.
She was so sorry to be such a nuisance to everybody, she would say, putting on the most winningly plaintive air for his benefit. Had she not better go at once instead of waiting for opportunities, which might not occur for weeks? She would be quite safe, and had no fear of travelling by herself. She was only a “wet blanket” in the house, and an intolerable burden—she could see that. Everybody was so strange now—as if she had done something awful. He, Christopher, was the only one who ever gave her a kind word, or seemed to care whether she was alive or dead. And then out would come the daintiest little lace handkerchief in the world, and, of course, poor old soft-hearted Christopher felt extremely foolish—as she intended he should—and wilder than ever with the absent Sellon, which she did not intend.
Then he would endeavour to reassure her and reiterate again and again that nobody blamed her, which, of course, did not impose upon her, for with the freemasonry existing among women Violet knew better; knew that she was in fact the very one whom her hostess indeed did think the most to blame. She must not hurry away from them like that, he would say. Things would come right again—it was only a temporary misunderstanding, and they would all be as jolly again together as before. And Violet in her secret heart rejoiced—for any day might bring back her lover. However great was her apparent anxiety to relieve them of her presence it would not do to be hurried away just in time to miss him. That would be too awful.
Her relief at the welcome reprieve would not, however, have been so great had she been aware of a certain fact as to which she had been designedly kept in ignorance. Selwood had written to Maurice, directing the letter to the principal hotel of a town through which the treasure seekers were bound to pass on their return. He had taken steps to ensure its immediate delivery, or return to himself if not claimed within a given period, and in it she asked Sellon not to come to Sunningdale until he had had an interview with the writer—at any place he, Sellon, might choose to appoint. No, assuredly, her equanimity might have been a trifle disturbed had she known of that. So the days went by.
One afternoon she was indulging in a solitary stroll, according to her recent habit. It was nearly sundown. She walked along absently, her dress sweeping the crickets in chirruping showers from the long dank herbage under the shade of the quince hedge. She crossed, the deserted garden, and gained the rough wicket-gate opening out of it on the other side. Down the narrow bridle-path, winding through the tangled brake she moved, still absently as in a dream. And she was in a dream, for it was down this path that they two had walked that first morning—ah! so long ago now.
She stood upon the river bank, on the very spot where they had stood together. The great peaks soaring aloft were all golden in the slanting sunset. The shout and whistle of the Kaffir herds bringing in their flocks sounded from the sunlit hillside, mellowed by distance. Doves cooed softly in the thorn-brake—their voices mingling with the fantastic whistle of the yellow thrush and the shrill chatter of a cloud of finks flashing in and out of their hanging nests above the water. She stood thus in the radiant evening light, trying to infuse her mind with a measure of its peace.
But above the voices of Nature and of evening came another sound—the dull thud of hoofs. Some one was riding up the bridle-path on the other side of the river. Heavens! Could it be—?
The thought set her every pulse tingling. Nearer, nearer came the hoof strokes.
The horseman emerged from the brake. Tired and travel-worn he looked, so too did his steed. The latter plunged knee-deep into the cool stream, and drank eagerly, gratefully, of the flowing waters.