They obeyed her, of course, but Lady Peggy shrugged her shoulders slightly. She had no fancy for Stephen’s bridge, and they cut together. Wilhelmina waited until the soft fall of the cards had ceased, and the hands were being examined. Then, with a graceful movement, she slipped out of the window and away into the shadows. No signs of her headache were left. She passed swiftly along a narrow path, bordered by gigantic shrubs, until she reached a small iron gate. Here for the first time she paused.
For several moments she listened. There was no sound from the great house, whose outline she could barely see but whose long row of lights stretched out behind her. She turned her head and looked along the grass-grown lane beyond the gate. There was no one in sight—no sound. She lifted the latch and passed through.
For a summer night it was unusually dark. All day the heat had been almost tropical, and now the sky was clouded over, and a south wind, dry and unrefreshing, was moving against the tall elms. Every few seconds the heavens were ablaze with summer lightning; once the breathless silence was broken by a low rumble of distant thunder.
She reached the end of the lane. Before her, another gate led out on to a grass-covered hill, strewn with fragments of rocks. She paused for a moment and looked backwards. She was suddenly conscious that her heart was beating fast; the piquant sense of adventure with which she had started had given place to a rarer and more exciting turmoil of the senses. Her breath was coming short, as though she had been running.
The silence seemed more complete than ever. She lifted her foot and felt the white satin slipper. It was perfectly dry, there was no dew, and as yet no rain had fallen. She lifted the latch of the gate and passed through.
The footpath skirted the side of a plantation, and she followed it closely, keeping under the shelter of the hedge. Every now and then a rabbit started up almost from under her feet, and rushed into the hedge. The spinney itself seemed alive with birds and animals, startled by her light footsteps in the shelter which they had sought, disturbed too by their instinct of the coming storm. Her footsteps grew swifter. She was committed now to her enterprise, vague though it had seemed to her. She passed through a second gate into a ragged wood, and along a winding path into a country road. She turned slowly up the hill. Her breath was coming faster than ever now. What folly!—transcendental!—exquisite! Her footsteps grew slower. She kept to the side of the hedge, raising her skirts a little, for the grass was long. A few yards farther was the gate. The soft swish of her silken draperies as she stole along, became a clearly recognizable sound against the background of intense silence. Macheson had been leaning against a tree just inside. He opened the gate. She stepped almost into his arms. Her white face was suddenly illuminated by the soft blaze of summer lightning which poured from the sky. He had no time to move, to realize. He felt her hands upon his cheek, his face drawn downwards, her lips, soft and burning, pressed against his for one long, exquisite second. And then—the darkness once more and his arms were empty.