“And I love fifty other things and other people. I haven’t got a bit of feeling for you!” cried Cosy, desperately. “Why, I’m making a story out of you as you stand there before me. Is that caring anything about you?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I only know that I want you. Give me a chance. Without you I shall never come to good.”
“I don’t think you will,” said Constancy, suddenly and keenly. “I have said no, and there’s an end of it. You seem to have played a very mean sort of trick on your brother, and you can’t expect to get any good out of it. You certainly won’t from me.”
“Constancy—”
“If you were a little older and wiser, you would know what an impossible sort of way you have behaved in. But I suppose you must be excused, because you are a boy, and know no better.”
He turned white with anger.
“I don’t know if I love you, or hate you,” he said. “But you shall never say that to me again.”
He was gone in a moment, leaving Constancy stirred, upset, and frightened, so strong was the contest between his boyish and foolish behaviour, and the impression of strength and passion made upon her by himself. She was quite sure that she hated him.
Godfrey sprang into his dog-cart, and drove down the rough, stony hillside, at a break-neck pace. He was mad with anger at Constancy and at himself, while stings of conscience and vague alarm pierced the tumult of wrath, and added to its heat. He thought neither of ghost nor ancestor, as he drove madly along the stony lanes that led through the valley of the Flete; but he pressed on, as though driven by furies, fear of what he might find gradually forcing itself upon him, till, as he reached the bridge, and looked towards the house, he saw that the windows of the octagon room were full of light. In sudden alarm, he dashed on up the old avenue to the stable door.