“Will I?” he said, taking it, hand and all.
“What a small hand you have,” she said, laughing softly. “It is too large for your little finger; you had better give it back to me.”
“It will be a bad day for me when I do,” he said, grimly, “for I shall be limp and cold.”
“Or faithless,” she said, with a smile.
Then, before he could retort, she touched his lips with hers, murmured his name, and was gone.
He watched her until the slight, girlish figure had vanished, then went slowly to his horse, mounted, and rode slowly away.
A minute or so afterward a lady and gentleman came out from among the trees. The gentleman was Spenser Churchill, the lady—Lady Grace.
He wore his usual bland, benevolent smile, intensified, if anything, as he looked after the disappearing horseman, but Lady Grace was white almost to pallor, and stood biting her under lip, and breathing heavily.
“What a charming pastoral!” he said, with his smooth, oily laugh; “Adam and Eve, or Edwin and Angelina, in Goldsmith’s poem—you know it, dear Lady Grace?—were never more poetical or touching! Really, one cannot help feeling grateful to the happy chance which enabled me to be a witness of so moving and charming a scene.”
“Chance!” she said, and her voice sounded thick and forced. “You knew that they would be here when you asked me to come!” and she shot a glance of scorn and hate at him.