“You dare!” she cried, under her breath, but as fiercely as if she had shrieked. “You dare! You just dare to touch a root of those trees——!” She saw the trap then and stopped, but she was still trembling when he rose, laughing, to make way for her, as Petronilla left the table.
“I was right!” he whispered exultantly. “I was right, and you are a wicked deceiver. You didn’t prefer the road!”
Later, they played Pope Joan in the hall, with a wonderful old gilded bowl and mother-of-pearl counters, Rishwald planting himself firmly beside Mrs. Slinker, and magnanimously paying her double when she won, though she was both a luckier and a better player than he. There was no mistaking his complete captivation, and Nettie, as he slid the counters tenderly towards her, thought of Dixon’s words. She had got into a different world; she would marry into that world a second time; there was no going back for those who once stepped out.
Savaury, who detested cards, played soft nothings on a dim piano, and, at the end of the first game, moved by some unaccountable impulse, invited the horse-dealer’s daughter to sing. Nettie got up at once, glad to escape further mother-of-pearl attentions, and went across to him. She sang “Veils.”
“I drew betwixt us blue mist of the main,
The gray mist of an English winter’s rain,
The black mist of intolerable pain:
Yet, if I draw even Death between us twain,
Through its white mist I still shall see you plain.”
“A silly little song!” Savaury snorted, by way of gratitude. “A tiresome, silly little song—quite too absurd! For goodness’ sake sing something else!” and sang the silly little song in his sentimental little heart for the rest of the night.