“My love to Letty,” Wilhelmina said graciously, as he rode off. Then she turned to Macheson.
“Stephen Hurd is a little corner in your house,” she remarked.
“In our house,” he protested. “I should never have considered him if he had not worked out his own salvation. If he had reached me ten minutes later——”
She gripped his arm.
“Don’t,” she begged.
He laughed.
“Don’t ever brood over grisly impossibilities,” he said. “The man never breathed who could have kept you from me. Across the hills home, or are your shoes too thin?”
He swung open the gate, and they passed through, only to descend the other side, along the broad green walk strewn with grey rocks and bordered with gorse bushes, aglow with yellow blossom. They skirted the fir plantation, received the respectful greetings of Mrs. Green at the gamekeeper’s cottage, and, crossing the lower range of hills, approached the house by the back avenue. And Wilhelmina laughed softly as they passed along the green lane, for her thoughts travelled back to one wild night when, with upraised skirts and flying, trembling footsteps, she had sped along into a new world. She clung to her husband’s arm.
“I came this way, dear, when I set out that night—to kiss you.”
He stooped down and kissed her full on the lips.