‘You distinctly, then, decline to carry out your engagement to my daughter?’
‘My dear aunt, surely you exaggerate? When was there any engagement?’
‘It was the same thing. You paid her great attention, and Shangarry has set his heart on it.’
‘I am sorry for Lord Shangarry.’
‘You refuse, then?’
‘Distinctly,’ says Wyndham. He lifts his hat and hurries past her. She waits a little, watching him until he disappears round the corner that will lead him to the Cottage.
CHAPTER XLVII.
‘For what wert thou to me?
How shall I say?’
He finds Ella standing, where she had stood throughout her interview with Mrs. Prior, beneath a big horse-chestnut-tree in the garden. She had resisted all Miss Manning’s entreaties to come indoors and lie down and have a cup of tea (that kind woman’s one unfailing recipe for all diseases and griefs under the sun), and had only entreated piteously that she might be left alone.