She clasped her hands through his other arm, and whispered something in his ear, as they turned up the avenue together. Just then the sound of horses' hoofs in the road made them both turn round. Captain Westover and Lady May were riding by together, with their eyes fixed upon Paul and his companion.
CHAPTER XIX.
"BLOOD CALLS ALOUD FOR BLOOD AND NOT FOR HANDS ENTWINED"
It was with a strange conflict of feelings that Paul, with Adrea by his side, passed across the square, low hall of the cottage, plentifully decorated with stags' heads and other sporting trophies, and into the drawing-room. It was a room which had been built, too, of quaint shape, made up of nooks and corners and recesses, and with dark oak beams stretching right across the ceiling. The furniture was all old-fashioned, and of different periods; but the general effect was harmonious, though a trifle shabby. Paul knew it well! Many an evening he had come in to tea there, after a cigar and a chat with the old Major, and lounged in that low chair by Mrs. Harcourt's side. But it scarcely seemed like the same room to him now. The Major and his wife had been old-fashioned people, and their personality, and talk, and surroundings, had created a sort of atmosphere which Paul had grown almost to associate with the place. He missed it directly he entered the room. What it was that had worked the change it was hard to tell. Adrea had been far too charmed with its quaintness to seriously alter anything. A little stiffness in the arrangement of the furniture had been corrected, and the few antimacassars carefully removed; otherwise nothing had been changed. The great bowls of yellow roses and chrysanthemums, and the piles of modern books and music lying about, might have been partly responsible for it; and the faint perfume which he had grown to associate altogether with Adrea, and which seemed wafted into the air as she gathered up her skirts on her way into the room, had a foreign flavour in it. But, after all, it was Adrea herself who changed the atmosphere so completely. She was so different from other women in her strange Eastern beauty and the leopard-like grace of her movements that she could not fail to create an atmosphere around her. Yes! it was she herself who had worked the change; just as she had worked so wonderful a change in him, Paul told himself.
At first they had thought that the room was empty; and Adrea, who had entered a little in advance, turned round to Paul and held out her hands with a sudden sweeping gesture of invitation. Even in that moment, as he moved towards her, Paul had time to feel a quick glow of admiration at the artistic elegance of her pose and colouring. Her proud, dusky face and brilliant eyes found a perfect background in the deep orange of her loose gown, and the velvet twined amongst her dark hair. Her arms, stretched out towards him, were half bare, where the lace had fallen back, and a world of passionate love and invitation was glowing in her face as she leaned slightly towards him, as if impatient of his slow advance. But before his hands had touched hers, a voice from the further end of the room had broken in upon that eloquent silence.
"Adrea! you did not see me!"
They stood for a moment as though paralysed; then Adrea turned slowly round with darkening face. "I did not! I thought that you were upstairs!"
She glided out of the shadows, a slim, tall figure dressed with curious simplicity, and with white, bloodless face. "I am going away," she said, coming quite close to them, and fixing her full, deep eyes upon Adrea; "I am going away at once. But, Adrea, there is one word—just one word—"
"Say it!" Adrea interrupted impatiently.