‘You can trust yourself to me, Miss Lavington?’
‘By all means. I shall enjoy the walk after—:’ and she stopped. In a moment the dog-cart had rattled off, with a parting curse from the squire to the servants, who were unharnessing the horses.
Argemone took Lancelot’s arm; the soft touch thrilled through and through him; and Argemone felt, she knew not why, a new sensation run through her frame. She shuddered—not with pain.
‘You are cold, Miss Lavington?’
‘Oh, not in the least.’ Cold! when every vein was boiling so strangely! A soft luscious melancholy crept over her. She had always had a terror of darkness; but now she felt quite safe in his strength. The thought of her own unprotected girlhood drew her heart closer to him. She remembered with pleasure the stories of his personal prowess, which had once made her think him coarse and brutal. For the first time in her life she knew the delight of dependence—the holy charm of weakness. And as they paced on silently together, through the black awful night, while the servants lingered, far out of sight, about the horses, she found out how utterly she trusted to him.
‘Listen!’ she said. A nightingale was close to them, pouring out his whole soul in song.
‘Is it not very late in the year for a nightingale?’
‘He is waiting for his mate. She is rearing a late brood, I suppose.’
‘What do you think it is which can stir him up to such an ecstasy of joy, and transfigure his whole heart into melody?’
‘What but love, the fulness of all joy, the evoker of all song?’