‘Not good enough for an heiress like you,’ returns he, smiling. Now that he has finally, most unwillingly and most ungraciously, given in to the fact that she is to be his tenant, he feels more kindly towards her, and more human. ‘You will want a lady companion to read with you—you say you wish to go on with your studies—and to go out with you.’
‘Go out!’ She regards him with quick horror. ‘I shall never go out of this—never!’ cries she.
The extraordinary passion of her manner checks him. She has sunk upon a garden-chair, as if incapable of supporting herself any longer; and from this she looks up at him with a sad and frightened face.
‘I will leave,’ says she at last. It is a most mournful surrender of hope, and all things that make life still dear to her.
‘There is no necessity for that,’ says Wyndham hurriedly. ‘If I knew more—if I knew how to help you—but’—breaking off abruptly—‘you yourself have decided against that. You must pardon me. You have already told me that you do not wish to tell me of yourself, your past——’
She makes a little gesture with her hand. Wyndham, standing still upon the gravelled path, looks at her.
‘I have been thinking about that,’ says she, ‘and’—with growing agitation—‘it has seemed very ungrateful of me to distrust you—you who have done so much for me, who are now giving up your lovely home for me. Mr. Wyndham’—rising and coming towards him—‘I have made up my mind; I will tell you all.’
END OF VOL. I.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
