“I can take care of myself, miss,” said Bessie, firmly.
“Go in at once,” commanded Olivia. “Do you think I am afraid to run up our own drive? Why, what a coward you must think me.”
“I mean to go——” began Bessie, more firmly than before, when both girls were startled into silence by the sound of a third voice.
“I will go with Miss Olivia, if she will let me, Bessie,” it said.
“Mr. Faradeane!” said Bessie, with a little catch in her voice. “Yes, sir, you shall go.”
Olivia’s heart seemed to stand still at the sound of the voice which had been the first and only one to thrill it to its secret depths, and her face went pale. With a great effort she forced a slight laugh. “Bessie disposes of me as if I were her exclusive property,” she said, and the effort she made to control her voice caused it to sound hard and cold. She moved on, and Faradeane, taking her remark as permission, walked by her side. Olivia’s heart was beating wildly. Scarcely for a moment since her scene with him in the wood had he been absent from her thoughts. At night in her dreams she could hear his voice calling her name, calling her his darling! Shame and love—alas! yes, love—battled for mastery within her as she felt the influence of the near presence of the man who had absorbed her whole life, who had become to her, as the old Persian poem says,
“The sun and the moon and the stars and the light thereof.”
this man who, while he had dared to take her in his arms, had stopped short of asking her to be his wife.
She felt now, as her face burned as if with fire, that she ought to send him from her with a cold word of dismissal; but she could not, for there was a miserable conviction within her heart that he was her soul’s master, and that she was his slave.
For some minutes they walked on in silence, Olivia with her shawl drawn round her, almost concealing her face, Faradeane with his head erect, his hand thrust in his pocket, a set look of earnest thought upon his pale, haggard face. At last he said: