‘Susan!’ says Carew, in a voice of low and hurried entreaty; and Susan, responding to it, speeds quickly up the road and into the little gateway.
‘Oh, come in—come in!’ breathes the stranger in a whisper, putting out her hands and catching Susan’s in a soft grasp. ‘I have seen you so often; I’—flushing and smiling timidly—‘have watched you from the sycamore many a day. And it’s very lonely here. You will come in for a moment, won’t you?’
Susan smiles back at her, and passes through the small green gate. Ella, pleased and palpitating, glances back, to see Carew looking after them like a young culprit at the door of a forbidden paradise.
‘Won’t you come too?’ cries she, beneath her breath, in that soft, curiously frightened sort of a way that seems to belong to her. ‘Hurry! hurry!’ She looks anxious, and it is only, indeed, when Carew has come inside the gate, and she has with her own fingers fastened and secured it, that the brightness returns to her face.
‘It’s very good of you,’ says she, smiling rather shyly at Susan.
‘Oh no!’ cries Susan, with a charming courtesy that belongs to her; ‘it is very good of you to let us come and see you. You know’—softly—‘we had heard—understood—that you did not wish to be intruded on. That is’—stammering faintly—‘that you didn’t wish to see people, and so—’
‘It is all quite true,’ says the girl distinctly. ‘I don’t want to see people—not everyone, you know. But sometimes when I hear your voices over there’—pointing towards the Rectory garden—‘laughing and talking, I have felt a little lonely.’ She is looking at Susan, and Susan can see that her eyes now are a little misty. ‘To-day’—wistfully—‘you were laughing a great deal.’
‘Yes, yes; I wish we hadn’t been,’ says Susan, who is beginning to feel distinctly contrite, until she remembers that, after all, some tears were mingled with her mirth. ‘But now that we have met, you will come and join us sometimes, won’t you?—and, indeed, to-day? I wish you had come to-day. We should all have been glad to see you—shouldn’t we, Carew?’
‘I am sure you know that,’ says Carew to Ella. A warm colour is dyeing his handsome young face, and there is the tenderest, most reverential expression in his voice. Carew is of that age when ‘the light that lies in a lady’s eyes’ can mean heaven to him.
‘I shall never leave this place,’ says Ella quickly. ‘All I want is to stay here, in this lovely garden, by myself.’