"So you are rusticating," Broxbourne said, as he and Camilla were left to themselves; "not much in your line, is it? But I suppose now that you are going to settle down you have turned over a new leaf entirely. Is the lucky man down here?"
"No, he has gone to build a hospital, or buy up a whole county, as a thanksgiving for our approaching wedding," Camilla laughed. "Don't you think a hospital is a very good idea? I expect he imagines he may want it before I have finished with him."
She spoke as lightly as ever, and laughed with the same ease, but within the warm embrace of her furs she seemed to wither, to shrink a little. Not half an hour before she had been longing, praying almost, for some barrier to stand in the pathway of her marriage. Now she knew with the unerring sense of intuition that what she had dreaded so much just before Christmas, and which of late she had managed to forget almost entirely, was coming upon her—that her future was definitely threatened.
She had been so protected of late, so wrapped about with the tenderest, the most chivalrous care, that she felt this sudden translation into the old atmosphere more keenly than she had ever felt any of her former troubles and anxieties. It was as though she had been stripped of every warm garment, and thrust shivering and helpless into the aching cold of a black frost.
Yet she tried to play her part.
"You wrote me a very nice letter, Sammy," she said.
He laughed.
"Yes, didn't I? Too good by half."
Fate had played Camilla a nasty trick by bringing her face to face with this man just at this particular moment.
When he had been thrown, his first act on picking himself up had been to thrash his horse unmercifully. That had relieved him a little, but the poison of his anger had not worked off completely. He had always promised himself the pleasure of dealing very straightly with Mrs. Lancing. He was not likely to deny himself the satisfaction of doing this when he felt so much in need of a vent for his feelings; when, too, he knew that he had the situation in the hollow of his hand.