—German Song.
At breakfast Molly is very pale, and speaks little. She toys with her toast, but cannot eat. Being questioned, she confesses herself fatigued, not being accustomed to late hours.
She neither looks at Luttrell, nor does he seek to attract her attention in any way.
"A good long walk will refresh you more than anything," says Talbot Lowry, who has been spending the past few days at Herst. He addresses Molly, but his eyes seek Cecil's as he does so, in the fond hope that she will take his hint and come with him for a similar refresher to that he has prescribed for Molly.
Cecil's unfortunate encouragement of the night before—displayed more with a view to chagrining Sir Penthony than from a mere leaning toward coquetry—has fanned his passion to a very dangerous height. He is consumed with a desire to speak, and madly flatters himself that there is undoubted hope for him.
To throw himself at Lady Stafford's feet, declare his love, and ask her to leave, for him, a husband who has never been more to her than an ordinary acquaintance, and to renounce a name that can have no charms for her, being devoid of tender recollections or sacred memories, seems to him, in his present over-strained condition, a very light thing indeed. In return, he argues feverishly, he can give her the entire devotion of a heart, and, what is perhaps a more practical offer, a larger income than she can now command.
Then, in the present day, what so easily, or quietly, or satisfactorily arranged, as a divorce in high life, leaving behind it neither spot nor scar, nor anything unpleasant in the way of social ostracism? And this might—nay, should—follow.
Like Molly, he has lain awake since early dawn arranging plans and rehearsing speeches; and now, after breakfast, as he walks beside the object of his adoration through the shrubberies and outer walks into the gardens beyond, carried away by the innate vanity of him, and his foolish self-esteem, and not dreaming of defeat, he decides that the time has come to give voice to his folly.
They are out of view of the windows, when he stops abruptly, and says rashly,—with a pale face, it is true, but a certain amount of composure that bespeaks confidence,—"Cecil, I can keep silence no longer. Let me speak to you, and tell you all that is in my heart."
"He has fallen in love with Molly," thinks Cecil, wondering vaguely at the manner of his address, he having never attempted to call her by her Christian name before.