“I was going to say, only I’m afraid, if you’d only go and find her and talk to her. She thinks so much of you——”
She stopped again, for the smile had suddenly vanished from his face.
“That’s nonsense, Bessie,” he said. “But, as it happens, I want to see Miss Vanley, and I’ll go and find her.”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, humbly. “Are—are you angry with me?” and her lips quivered piteously.
“Angry with you, my dear child!” he exclaimed, reassuringly, and he patted her arm under the thick shawl. “Why should I be angry? But”—he paused almost imperceptibly—“but you must not talk such nonsense as that Miss Vanley thinks much or at all of me——”
“But she does!” interrupted Bessie, eagerly. “If you only heard her——”
“I mustn’t hear you any longer, you foolish child, or I shall miss Miss Vanley.”
And with another gentle and—to Bessie—forgiving touch, he turned and rode toward the wood.
All through the night Olivia had lain awake, tossing to and fro, like a soul struggling in chains. The scene with Bartley Bradstone seemed like a hideous dream, from which, try as she would, she could not awake.
That he should have dared to tell her that he loved her, have asked her to be his wife, was torture enough to her proud, maiden spirit; but that her father should be in his toils, and his happiness and even life—for she knew that Bartley Bradstone spoke only the truth when he said that to leave the Grange would mean death to the squire—was an agony almost insupportable.