To Lilian herself, his attentions are a terrible source of annoyance, and at times she feels as if the toils were closing in about her. She has never mentioned this new trouble in her letters to Claverton, thinking—and rightly—that it would bring him to her side at once; and she does not wish that, for his sake, if it can be avoided; but for her own, oh, how she longs for it! Why should this man, whom she had thought never to see again, return to persecute her? Had he not escaped—by a hair’s breadth merely—blighting her whole life, after embittering some of the best years of it? She feels that she is beginning to hate him; and it is while in this vein that she goes down to the drawing-room one afternoon to fetch a book, for she has taken to remaining in her room when the Paynes are out, as they are now. To her intense mortification, Truscott is there.
“Ah! At last!” is his greeting, in a tone which to her ear is provoking in its cool assurance. “I knew I should find you here, Lilian mine. The rest of the world has gone picnicking, hasn’t it?”
She had intended to make some excuse, and to leave him at once; but that possessive alters her plan. Now, once and for all, he must be made to understand her position, and that this tacitly assertive air of ownership which he has chosen to set up over her must cease.
“I don’t know why you should know anything of the sort,” she replies, very coldly.
“Don’t be angry, Lilian. You never used to fly out about trifles. What I meant was, we’ve had so little opportunity for a quiet talk together of late, that when I heard you had not gone with the others I thought it would be a capital opportunity for one now.”
It happened that that day a picnic in a small way had been organised; but Lilian, somewhat to the Paynes’ surprise, excused herself from going. She felt she could not take part in anything approaching to a festivity at such a time as this. It might be only a silly fad of hers, she said, and no one need know of it; still, she would rather stay quietly at home.
“But Lilian, child,” objected Mrs Payne. “It’ll do you a world of good, and, after all, it’s a very mild form of festivity—not like a ball, you know. And I’m sure Arthur wouldn’t wish you to mope yourself to death just because he is away.”
“It isn’t because he’s away, but because he’s away as he is,” she answered. “He may be risking his life every moment, while I am enjoying myself as if no one I cared for in the world was in danger. Only think, he might be lying shot down in the bush at the very moment we are all laughing and joking,” and her voice sank to an awed whisper. “No. I’d rather stay at home quietly to-day.” And the good-hearted little woman had kissed her, and vowed she was perfectly right; and then they had gone, and Lilian had her way and the house to herself, instead of accompanying them to rove about the deep rocky recesses of Fern Kloof and to eat a scrambling luncheon beneath its tangled shade, looking down, as in a splendid panorama, on the sunlit plains of Lower Albany.
The consciousness of this, in conjunction with Truscott’s remark, causes her face to flush with something very like anger, and she answers, icily:
“In other words, you thought I had remained at home to receive visitors in Mrs Payne’s absence. Thank you. I might have remembered—were it not that our acquaintance was a matter of such a long time ago—that that would be just the interpretation Ralph Truscott might be expected to put upon my actions.”