For a few moments her thoughts flew off to Mr. Francis. He must have known that Harry's twin brother was a groom in the stables, yet he had been as certain as she that it was Harry they had surprised in the wood. He had been at pains to persuade her that the fault was venial, to assure her that young men would be young men, that Harry was honest. Why had he felt so certain on so slight a glance that it was Harry? What did it mean? Then she whisked Mr. Francis from her mind. He was as despicable as she, neither more nor less. He was as great a fool as she.
Was he? Was he? Did he know Harry as well as she—he who had known him all his life, she who had known him a month, no more? Certainly he did not, could not. She, who knew him so well, had rightly accused herself of disloyalty to him, compared herself to Elsa, and him.... Did she then owe him loyalty? Ah! a big word.
She put the dripping paddle back in the boat, for she was in wider fields than self-reproach has ever hedged about, and leaned forward, hearing the ripples lap and cluck on the sides. Supposing any one else—Geoffrey Langham, for instance—had chosen to walk in a wood with a dairymaid, would she have cared? would it have stung her? Not a jot. Then why——
At this she rose, slipped out of the boat, and for a moment looked at the wavering outline of her reflection in the lake. Then she stood upright, her arms fallen by her side, and a little voice spoke within her, which she tried to tell herself was not she.
"I surrender," it said.
She walked back to the lawn, proud and shy of the revelation she had made to herself, and with a mind once more unshadowed. Lady Oxted apparently had just awoke, and was looking distractedly round, as if she found herself in a strange bedroom. Harry, with one arm thrown behind his head, still slumbered.
"Unconscious innocent, tea!" said Lady Oxted, truculently poking him in the ribs with her parasol.
Harry opened both his eyes very wide, like a mechanical doll awaking.
"Why did you do that?" he said; "I have been lying here quietly, thinking. Have they come back from their walk?"