“Where is Gilbert?” she asked.
“Asleep on the lawn last time I saw him.”
“No one shooting, then?”
“We’re going to beat up the home turnips after lunch,” Captain Austin answered. “It’s rather an off day with us. Gilbert is nursing his leg—fancies he has rheumatism coming.”
She strolled out into the garden, but she avoided the spot where Gilbert Deyes lounged in an easy-chair, reading the paper and smoking cigarettes, with his leg carefully arranged on a garden chair in front of him. She took the winding path which skirted the kitchen gardens and led to the green lane, along which the carts passed to the home farm. She felt that what she was doing was in the nature of an experiment, she was yielding again to that most astonishing impulse which once before had taken her so completely by surprise. She passed out of the gate and along the lane. She began to climb the hill. About the success of her experiment she no longer had any doubt. Her heart was beating with pleasant insistence, a feeling of suppressed excitement sent the blood gliding through her veins with delicious softness. All the time she mocked at herself—that this should be Wilhelmina Thorpe-Hatton, to whom the most distinguished men, not only in one capital, but in Europe, had paid court, whom the most ardent wooer had failed to move, who had found, indeed, in all the professions of love-making something insufferably tedious. She was at once amused and annoyed at herself, but an instinctive habit of truthfulness forbade even self-deception. Her cheeks were aflame, and her heart was beating like a girl’s as she reached the spinney. She recognized the fact that she was experiencing a new and delightful pleasure, an emotion as unexpected and ridiculous as it was inexplicable. But she hugged it to herself. It pleased her immensely to feel that the impossible had happened. What all this army of men, experienced in the wiles of love-making, had failed to do, a crazy boy had accomplished without an effort. Absolutely bizarre, of course, but not so wonderful after all! She was so secure against any ordinary assault. She felt herself like the heroine of one of Gautier’s novels. If he had been there himself, she would have taken him into her arms with all the passionate simplicity of a child.
But he was not there. On the contrary, the place was looking forlorn and deserted. The shelter had been razed to the ground—she felt that she hated Stephen Hurd as she contemplated its ruin—the hedge was broken down by the inrush of people a few days ago. In the absence of any sunshine, the country around seemed bleak and colourless. She leaned over the gate and half closed her eyes. Memory came more easily like that!