“Where will you sit, my dear? Beside your husband, I suppose? Mine drives.”
Agatha answered by springing up beside Mr. Dugdale, with some vague jest about husbands being no company at all. The dark fit had passed, and she was now in a mood of desperation.
They dashed on quickly; Marmaduke was a daring driver.
Sometimes Agatha even thought he would overturn them in the road. Little she cared! She was in that state of excitement when the utmost peril would only have made her laugh. Passing under the three hills, and looking up at the old castle, silent and grey, the daylight shining through the fissured apertures that had been windows, she turned round and recklessly proposed to Harrie their scrambling up the green slope and rolling down again.
“E—h, my child!” said Duke Dugdale, turning his mild benevolent looks on the flushed face beside him. “Don't'ee try that, don't'ee, now! When people once set themselves rolling down-hill they never stop till they get to the bottom. It's always so in this world.”
Agatha laughed more loudly. She wished her husband to hear how merry she was. She talked incessantly to Mr. Dugdale or Harrie, and held herself very upright, so that Nathanael, who sat behind her, might not even feel the touch of her shoulder. She, who had hitherto been so indifferent to everybody, so mild in her likings and dislikes—never till now had she felt such strange emotions. Yet each and all carried with them a fierce charm. It was like a person learning for the first time what thirst was, and drinking fire, because, in any case, he must drink. And with all her wrath there seemed a spell over heart, brain, and senses, which never for a moment allowed her to cease thinking of her husband. Every movement he made, every word he uttered, she distinctly felt and heard.
The way grew unfamiliar; they were passing through a track of country, wilder, and more peculiar than any Mrs. Harper had yet seen in Dorsetshire—a road cut through furzy eminences, looking down on deep, abrupt valleys, that might have been the bed of dried-up lakes or bays; long heathery sweeps of undulating ground, with great stones lying here and there; cultivation altogether ceasing—even sheep becoming rare; and ever when they chanced to rise on higher ground, a sharp, salt, sea-wind blowing, not a human being to be seen for miles.
“Here's the gate. I'll open it. Now we get into Anne Valery's property,” said Harrie, as she leaped down and leaped up again, mocking Nathanael's “brown study.”
“What a change!” Agatha cried. “I have not seen such trees in Dorsetshire.”
“They seem indeed to have grown on purpose for Anne. Her grandfather built Thornhurst. A queer desolate spot to choose, but it's a perfect little nest of beauty. There!”