Helston Varne had not been near them since that visit when they had met unexpectedly on the dusking road, and as a matter of hard fact Melian felt just a little sore with him for not having been. He had sent her a few lines—short, straight, and to the point—reminding her of his willingness to assist her at any time or at any moment, reminding her also of her promise not to be behindhand in claiming such aid. This note she had carefully kept. But he had not been near them again, and she had found herself very much wishing that he would come. There was something so refreshingly out of the ordinary about his personality—about his conversation—and then, too, the high intellectual talent which must go to make him such a success in the line of life he had adopted; the suggestion of mystery blended with power was just the element to appeal strongly to a girl of her character and temperament. The fact is, that during the intervening time—getting on for three months as it was—Melian had been thinking a great deal about Helston Varne.
Everything was favourable to introspection of the sort. The life she led, amid free, open, congenial surroundings, into the charm of which she had entered from the very first, and which had grown upon her more and more with every change of the advancing season—and yet the personality of the man seemed subtly to pervade it all. There were spots they had visited—a casual stroll along a woodland path, or a breezy, uphill climb to this or that point whence rolling views of some of the loveliest rural expanse in England swept away on either hand; and she could remember all that was said, and exactly where it was said, during their exchange of ideas, which were, for the most part, thoroughly in sympathy. And then, too, in her moments of shadowy fears in the mysterious ill-omened old house—small wonder that taking all things together she should have thought a good deal about Helston Varne during that intervening time.
It was the last day of Violet Clinock’s visit, and on the morrow she would be returning to town and work. She was a cheerful contented soul, but the contrast between this glorious early June day, paradisical in its cloudless beauty, the air fragrant with spring flowers and melodious with the song of soaring larks; every meadow a golden sea of buttercups; and soft masses of new leafage on high, irregular hedges, or towering hugely heavenwards from this or that noble wood—the contrast between this and the stuffy air and blackened chimney stacks which formed the sole and shut-in outlook from her own modest dwelling of all the year round was too marked even for her. She felt anything but lighthearted.
“You are in luck, Melian, dear,” she could not restrain herself from saying, wistfully. “Look at all this, and then think of me this time to-morrow.”
Melian was in the mood thoroughly to sympathise. This was one of those days which she appreciated every hour, every minute of—and on which she felt she could not get up too early or see the last of too late.
“Couldn’t you anyway manage to stretch it out even a day or two longer?” she said. “Surely you can?”
But the other shook a desponding head.
“No fear. I’ve pulled it out to its very utmost limits,” she said. “I can’t afford to play cat and banjo with my billet—certainly not yet.”
There was that in the answer which seemed to remind Melian that the speaker had done that very thing on her behalf, what time she had been ill, and friendless, and nearly destitute.
“It’s too bad,” she declared. “Yes, I am lucky, Violet, dear, and I owe my luck entirely to you. But of course, when you have your long holiday—in August or September—you are to put in every day of it here. Just think—all those glorious heather slopes above Plane Pond—right away back—will be blazing with crimson, and—what times we’ll have. It isn’t so far off either, so buck up. It’s of no use talking about week-ends I suppose.”