"We're fated to be brought together," she said.
"How did you know I was at The Shrubbery?"
Valerie raised her eyebrows.
"Betty's my oldest friend," she replied.
Lyveden swallowed the suggestio falsi without a thought. Indeed, so soon as she had spoken, his mind sped back, bee-like, to suck the honey of her previous words: "We're fated to be brought together." Fated….
The moon was up now, and he lifted his eyes and gazed at its clear-cut beauty. A power, then, greater than he had ruled against his resolve. Why? To what end? It was very kind of the power—at least, he supposed it was—but what was to come of it?
He had wandered straight into her arms. Very good. But—he and she could not stroll upon this terrace for ever. The relentless rubric of Life insisted that he must move—whither he chose, of course, but somewhither. The truth was, he did not know which way to turn. His heart pointed a path, certainly—a very precious path, paved all with silk, hung with the scent of flowers, shadowed by whispering plumage…. His head, however, beyond denouncing his heart as a guide, pointed no way at all.
Anthony wanted desperately to do the right thing. Fortune, it seemed, was at her old tricks. Here she was handing a palace to a beggar who had not enough money to maintain a hovel. It would not have been so hopeless if he had possessed "prospects." With these in his pack, he might have essayed the way his heart showed him. They were, however, no part of a footman's equipment….
Anthony began to wonder what became of old footmen. One or two, perhaps, became butlers. As for the rest…
Valerie, too, was in some perplexity. She was wondering, now that she had her man here, how best to deal with him. Pride and honour make up a ground which must be trodden delicately. One false step on her part might cost them both extremely dear. Her instinct was to take the bull by the horns, Anthony by the arm, and Time by the forelock. The last of these was slipping away—slipping away. She was actually twenty-six. In a short fourteen years she would be actually forty. Forty! For a moment she was upon the very edge of exercising the privilege of a sovereign lady who has fallen in love. All things considered, she would, I think, have been justified. Something, however, restrained her. It was not modesty, for modesty had nothing to do with the matter. It was not the fear of rejection, for she was sure of her ground. It was probably a threefold influence—a rope, as it were, of three stout strands. The first was consideration for Anthony's pride; the second, an anxiety lest she should beggar him of that which he prized above rubies, namely, his self-respect; the third, an innate conviction that while the path of Love may look easy, it is really slippery and steep out of all conscience.