“I so understood. I thought that she intimated as much. She said that you were to be happy; were already content. And that I would only be making you trouble if I continued our acquaintance.”
“Oh! Rachael.” She smiled with sudden softness. “Rachael cannot understand, either. I’m sure she intended well, poor soul. Were they all like Rachael—— But I had no knowledge of her talk with you. Anyway, please leave me if you feel disposed. Whether I marry Daniel or not should be no concern of yours. I shall have to find my own trail out. Look! There go the ducks. I came down to watch them. Now neither of us has any excuse for staying. Good——”
The hush had tightened into a strange pent stillness like the poise of earth and sky and beast and bird just before the breaking of a great and lowering storm. The quick clatter of the ducks’ wings somehow alarmed me—the staring of the children, their eyes directed past us, sharpened my senses for a new focus. And glancing, I witnessed Daniel nearing—striding rapidly, straight for the point, a figure portentous in the fading glow, bringing the storm with him.
She saw, too. Her eyes widened, startled, surveying not him, but me. 246
“Please go. At once! I’ll keep him.”
“It is too late now,” I asserted, in voice not mine. “I am here first and I’ll go when I get ready.”
“You mean to face him?”
“I mean to hear what he has to say, and learn what he intends to do. I don’t see any other way—unless you really wish me to go?”
“No, no!” cried My Lady. “I don’t want you to be harmed; but oh, how I have suffered.” All her countenance was suffused—with anger, with shame, and even with hope. She trembled, gazing at me, and fluctuant.
“So have I, madam,” said I, grimly.