“You need not fear,” murmured Anne. “How could I need? The secret would withhold me, were there nothing else.”
“And there is something else? Eh, sweetheart? Is that all I am to be satisfied with?”
“Oh sir!—Mr. Archfield, I mean—O Charles!” she stammered.
Mr. Fellowes turned round to consult his pupil as to whether the halt should be made at the village whose peaked roofs were seen over the fruit trees.
But when Anne was lifted down from the steed it was with no grasp of common courtesy, and her hand was not relinquished till it had been fervently kissed.
Charles did not again torment her with entreaties to share his exile. Mayhap he recognised, though unwillingly, that her judgment had been right, but there was no small devotion in his whole demeanour, as they dined, rode, and rested on that summer’s day amid fields of giant haycocks, and hostels wreathed with vines, with long vistas of sleek cows and plump dappled horses in the sheds behind. The ravages of war had lessened as they rode farther from the frontier, and the rich smiling landscape lay rejoicing in the summer sunshine; the sturdy peasants looked as if they had never heard of marauders, as they herded their handsome cattle and responded civilly when a draught of milk was asked for the ladies.
There was that strange sense of Eden felicity that sometimes comes with the knowledge that the time is short for mutual enjoyment in full peace. Charles and Anne would part, their future was undefined; but for the present they reposed in the knowledge of each other’s hearts, and in being together. It was as in their childhood, when by tacit consent he had been Anne’s champion from the time she came as a little Londoner to be alarmed at rough country ways, and to be easily scared by Sedley. It had been then that Charles had first awakened to the chivalry of the better part of boyhood’s nature, instead of following his cousin’s lead, and treating girls as creatures meant to be bullied. Many a happy reminiscence was shared between the two as they rode together, and it was not till the pale breadth of sea filled their horizon, broken by the tall spires and peaked gables and many-windowed steep roofs of Ostend, that the future was permitted to come forward and trouble them. Then Anne’s heart began to feel that persistence in her absolute refusal was a much harder thing than at the first, when the idea was new and strange to her. And there were strange yearnings that Charles should renew the proposal, mixed with dread of herself and of her own resolution in case of his doing so. As her affections embraced him more and more she pictured him sick, wounded, dying, out of reach of all, among Germans, Hungarians, Turks,—no one at hand to comfort him or even to know his fate.
There was even disappointment in his acquiescence, though her better mind told her that it was in accordance with her prayer against temptation. Moreover, he was of a reserved nature, not apt to discuss what was once fixed, and perhaps it showed that he respected her judgment not to try to shake her decision. Though for once love had carried him away, he might perhaps be grateful to her for sparing him the perplexities of dragging her about with him and of giving additional offence to his parents. The affection born of lifelong knowledge is not apt to be of the vehement character that disregards all obstacles or possible miseries to the object thereof. Yet enough feeling was betrayed to make Naomi whisper at night, “Sweet Nan, are you not some one else’s sweet?”
And Anne, now with another secret on her heart, only replied with embraces, and, “Do not talk of it! I cannot tell how it is to be. I cannot tell you all.”
Naomi was discreet enough only to caress.