‘Yes, I’ll do that after a little rest. I’ll take half an hour or so of quiet,’ said she, in broken utterances. ‘I suppose the gentlemen will sit over their wine; there’s no fear of their breaking-up.’
‘Very little fear, indeed,’ said Kate, laughing at the word. ‘Papa made me give out some of his rare old ‘41 wine to-day, and they’re not likely to leave it.’
‘Bye-bye, then, for a little while,’ said Nina dreamily, for her thoughts had gone off on another track. ‘I shall join you later on.’
Kate tripped gaily up the stairs, singing pleasantly as she went, for hers was a happy heart and a hopeful.
Nina lingered for a moment with her hand on the banister, and then hurried to her room.
It was a still cold night of deep winter, a very faint crescent of a new moon was low in the sky, and a thin snowfall, slightly crisped with frost, covered the ground. Nina opened her window and looked out. All was still and quiet without—not a twig moved. She bent her ear to listen, thinking that on the frozen ground a step might perhaps be heard, and it was a relief to her anxiety when she heard nothing. The chill cold air that came in through the window warned her to muffle herself well, and she drew the hood of her scarlet cloak over her head. Strong-booted, and with warm gloves, she stood for a moment at her door to listen, and finding all quiet, she slowly descended the stairs and gained the hall. She started affrighted as she entered, thinking there was some one seated at the table, but she rallied in an instant, as she saw it was only the loose horseman’s coat or cloak of the chief constable, which, lined with red, and with the gold-laced cap beside it, made up the delusion that alarmed her.
It was not an easy task to withdraw the heavy bolts and bars that secured the massive door, and even to turn the heavy key in the lock required an effort; but she succeeded at length, and issued forth into the open.
‘How I hope he has not come! how I pray he has not ventured!’ said she to herself as she walked along. ‘Leave-takings are sad things, and why incur one so full of peril and misery too? When I wrote to him, of course I knew nothing of his danger, and it is exactly his danger will make him come!’ She knew of others to whom such reasonings would not have applied, and a scornful shake of the head showed that she would not think of them at such a moment. The sound of her own footsteps on the crisp ground made her once or twice believe she heard some one coming, and as she stopped to listen, the strong beating of her heart could be counted. It was not fear—at least not fear in the sense of a personal danger—it was that high tension which great anxiety lends to the nerves, exalting vitality to a state in which a sensation is as powerful as a material influence.
She ascended the steps of the little terraced mound of the rendezvous one by one, overwhelmed almost to fainting by some imagined analogy with the scaffold, which might be the fate of him she was going to meet.
He was standing under a tree, his arms crossed on his breast, as she came up. The moment she appeared, he rushed to meet her, and throwing himself on one knee, he seized her hand and kissed it.