He helped them both down and settled them comfortably with a rug and cushions in the shade of the hedge.
“Will you be all right here?” he asked Frances. “I will tell Elsie to look after you.”
“I shall be quite all right,” she assured him. “Please don’t let anyone waste any time over me!”
He smiled and turned away. She watched him go with an answering smile upon her lips.
Roger came up and lay down beside them. The peace of a perfect day descended upon the harvest-field. The fragrance of the cut corn was like an oblation.
“Are we alone?” said Ruth.
“Yes, darling. Why?”
The little girl came pressing close to her side. “Because I’ve got something to tell you, and it’s a secret. I met a man to-day in the lane, who said he was a friend of yours. He didn’t tell me who he was, but it was the friend who wrote that letter to you. And he said—would I tell you that he will be at the Stones again to-night at ten.”
CHAPTER IX
THE LETTER
“At the Stones again to-night.” All through that morning in the corn-field the words were running in Frances’ brain. She tried to sketch, but her hand seemed to have lost its cunning, and there were times when a great trembling seized her. His letter she had thrust out of her mind. She had not read it, nor had she greatly desired to know what it contained. But his message was different, and again with the words she seemed to hear that rushing of an unseen car, and recalled the man, his bearing half-insolent, half-cynical, the curious persistence with which he had pursued her, the nameless attraction of his personality. She did not want to answer his message. She did not want to meet him. But yet—but yet—deep in the very heart of her she knew that a meeting was inevitable. A reckoning must come, and she was bound to face it. She might, if she so chose, avoid him now, but she could not avoid him always. Sooner or later she would have to endure her ordeal, and tell him—plainly tell him—that the madness was over and her eyes were open. She was not, and never had been, the type of woman which apparently he had taken her to be. And if he could not learn this by her silence she must summon strength to put the matter baldly into words. She shrank from the thought, but brought herself back to it again and again. The idea of writing to him presented itself, but she discarded it with an even greater distaste. When the ordeal was over, she desired—earnestly desired—that no trace of it should be left behind. No written word from her was in his possession now, nor should it ever be. She wanted to thrust away this unclean thing that had come into her life so that no vestige of it remained. And not until she had done this would she feel free.