There was a minute’s silence, broken by the snapping of one of her guitar strings. She took a fresh string from the case, and was about to put it on, when she found the guitar quietly taken from her.
“Let me do that,” said Gabriel, pleadingly; and Hilary, with a novel sense of pleasure in being helped, allowed him to have his way, glancing now and again at his intent face, which was the same, yet not the the same, she had known all her life.
Truth to tell, Gabriel was no lover of books; he had not at all the look of the pallid student, and had burnt no midnight oil at Oxford. But the University life had changed him from boy to man, his chest was a good two inches broader from rowing; he had an air of health and vigour, and the clearly-cut features, which were of the Roman type, had kept their refinement, but had lost the stamp of physical delicacy they had once borne.
“How well I remember Nero’s onslaught that day,” said Hilary. “It was the day we heard of Sir John Eliot’s death in the Tower.”
“Did you hear that Mr. Valentine and Mr. Strode, who were imprisoned at the same time as Sir John Eliot, were released last January? They had been in gaol nigh upon eleven years,” said Gabriel; and as he looked up from the guitar, Hilary saw an indignant gleam in his hazel eyes which startled her.
“Now you look as you used to look when we quarrelled,” she said, smiling. “By the bye, what did we quarrel about the day the dog bit you? I have quite forgot.”
“We wrangled over something in the sun-trap,” said Gabriel, his eyes growing tender once more. “What was it?”
Laughingly they both turned their minds back to the days when they had been children together, and presently, in a flash, the whole scene came back to them. Once again Hilary saw her father’s look of amusement as she gave her childish explanation of the dispute, “I said I wouldn’t be Gabriel’s wife, but we have made it up again, and I have given him my promise.”
The colour surged up into her face as for an instant she met Gabriel’s eyes, for in their liquid depths she could read love and eager hope, and withal just a touch of the mirthful expression which she knew so well of old. She knew that he, too, had heard that voice from the past.
Dropping the briar rose and hastily taking the guitar, she began to tune the string he had just fixed. The sound awoke Gabriel to the consciousness that they were not alone in the world, that the garden was no Garden of Eden, and that lovemaking was not so simple as in the days of their childhood. He remembered Mrs. Unett and Bishop Coke, who would assuredly have much to say as soon as this Midsummer’s dream had formed itself into words. “Sing to me,” he said, when the string at length was in tune. “So far I have but heard Bara Fostus from the other side of the wall—a sweet air, but somewhat melancholy.”