And for the next few minutes the advantages of a good downpour and the benefit therefrom to the garden as well as to the farmers, was discussed in detail: the watering of the borders, it transpired, fully occupied the gardener’s time each evening as a result of the dry spell.
Bored beyond measure, Steele took an abrupt leave, and declining William’s invitation to take a stroll round the grounds in his company, seized his hat and fled.
“She’ll never stick it,” he reflected, as he banged the gate and hurried away down the road like a man pursued. “She can’t. She’ll do a bunk, one day. I would in her place.”
And Prudence, defenceless in the drawing-room, meeting the brunt of William’s anger, and the reproaches of the others, determined in her rebellious soul that if release did not come in some legitimate form before she was twenty-one, she would on acquiring that age obtain it for herself.
Chapter Seven.
The moonlight fell softly on Prudence’s bright hair, touching the curls lovingly with a wan brilliance that, paling their shining gold, added a purer sheen to replace the beauty stolen by the night. Its light was reflected in the blue depths of her eyes, eyes which took on the misty darkness of the night sky so that the moonbeams felt at home therein and lingered there confidingly. She leaned far out of the window, and the fragrance of some early gloire de Dijon roses was wafted towards her on the night breeze. A scent besides that of the roses stole up to her out of the shadows—the scent of cigarette smoke, too close under her window to suggest that the smoker was beyond the wall that shut off the garden from the road. Prudence had watched the smoker enter the garden; she watched him now throw away his cigarette among the flowers in one of the borders as he advanced, and she heard his voice speaking softly to her out of the gloom.
“Can’t you come down?” he asked.
“Not unless you have come provided with a rope ladder,” she replied as softly.