She had turned a little away as though to watch a screaming curlew fly low down and vanish in the fog. From where he stood on slightly higher ground he looked down at her curiously, for in more than one sense she was a puzzle to him. There was a certain indefiniteness in her manner toward him which he felt a passionate desire to construe. She seemed at once merciful and merciless, sympathetic and hard. Then, as he looked at her, he almost forgot all this wilderness of suffering and doubt. All his intense love for physical beauty, ministered to by the whole manner of his life, seemed rekindled in her presence. The tragedy of the present seemed to pass away into the background. From the moment when he had first caught a glimpse of her in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vechi, he had chosen her face and presence with which to endow his artist's ideal—and, since that time, what change there had been in her had been for the better. The animal spirits of light-hearted girlhood had become toned down into the more refined and delicate softness of thoughtful womanhood. In her thin supple figure there was still just the suspicion of incomplete development, which is in itself a fascination; and her country attire, the well-cut brown tweed ulster, the cloth cap from beneath which many little waves of fair silky hair had escaped, the trim gloves and short skirts—the most insignificant article of her attire—all seemed to bespeak that peculiar and subtle daintiness which is at the same time the sweetest and the hardest to define of nature's gifts to women.
Even in the most acute crisis, woman's care for the physical welfare of man seems almost an instinct with her. Suddenly turning round, she saw how ill-protected he was against the weather, and a look of concern stole into her face.
"How ridiculous of you to come out without an overcoat or anything on such a day as this!" she exclaimed. "Why, you must be wet through!—and how cold you look!"
He smiled grimly. That she should think of such a thing just at that moment, seemed to him to be a peculiar satire upon what had been passing through his mind concerning her. Then a sudden thrill shook every limb in his body—his very pulses quickened. She had laid her gloved hand upon his arm, and, having withdrawn it, was regarding it ruefully. It was stained with wet.
"You must go home at once!" she said, with a decision in her tone which was almost suggestive of authority. "You must change all your things, and get before a warm fire. Come, I will walk with you as far as Falcon's Nest. I am going round that way, and home by the footpath."
They started off side by side. The first emotion of their meeting having passed away, he found it easier to talk to her, and he did so in an odd monosyllabic way which she yet found interesting. All her life she had been somewhat peculiarly situated with regard to companionship. Her father, having once taken her abroad and once to London for the season, considered that he had done his duty to her, and having himself long ago settled down to the life of a country squire, had expected her to be content with her position as his daughter and the mistress of his establishment. There was nothing particularly revolting to her in the prospect. She was not by any means emancipated. The "new woman" would have been a horror to her. But, unfortunately, although she was content to accept a comparatively narrow view of life, she was slightly epicurean in her tastes. She would have been quite willing to give up her life to a round of such pleasures as society and wealth can procure, but the society must be good and entertaining, and its pleasures must be refined and free from monotony. In some parts of England she might have found what would have satisfied her, and under the influence of a pleasure-seeking life, she would in due course have become the woman of a type. As she grew older the horizon of her life would have become more limited and her ideas narrower. She would have lived without tasting either the full sweetness or the full bitterness of life. She would have filled her place in society admirably, and there would have been nothing to distinguish her either for better or worse from other women in a similar position. But it happened that round Thurwell Court the people were singularly uninteresting. The girls were dull, and the men bucolic. Before she had spent two years in the country, Helen was intensely bored. A sort of chronic languor seemed to creep over her, and in a fit of desperation she had permitted herself to become engaged to Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, for the simple reason that he was different from the other men. Then, just as she was beginning to tremble at the idea of marriage with a man for whom she had never felt a single spark of love, there had come this tragedy, and, following close upon it, the vague consciousness of an utter change hovering over her life. What that change meant she was slow to discover. She was still unconscious of it as she walked over the cliffs with the grey mists hanging around them, side by side with her father's tenant. She knew that life had somehow become a fairer thing to her, and that for many years she had been living in darkness. And it was her companion, this mysterious stranger with his wan young face and sad thoughtful eyes, who had brought the light. She could see it flashing across the whole landscape of her future, revealing the promise of a larger life than any she had ever dreamed of, full of brilliant possibilities and more perfect happiness than any she had ever imagined. She told herself that he was the Columbus who had shown her the new land of culture, with all its fair places, intellectual and artistic. This was the whole meaning of the change in her. There could be nothing else.
CHAPTER XIV
HELEN THURWELL ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION
At the summit of the little spur of cliff they paused. Close on one side were the windows of Falcon's Nest, and on the other the batch of black firs which formed the background to it ran down the steep cliff side to the sea. The path which they were following curved round the cottage, and crossed the moor within a few yards of the spot where Sir Geoffrey had been found. As they stood together for a moment before parting, she noticed, with a sudden cold dismay, that thick shutters had recently been fitted to the windows of the little room into which she had stolen on the day of Sir Geoffrey's murder.