“I thought I was using your son-in-law’s room.”
“No,” she said, “oh, no! That room——” she paused. “The room you used—is my husband’s dressing-room. Since I lost him, it has been kept exactly as he left it. For over thirty years it has looked, each day, just as if he had used it the day before. It did not give you the feeling of a disused apartment?”
“No,” he said; “I thought——”
“You thought it was Colin’s? No; Colin has never been into that room. In fact, none enter there. It is a sanctuary of mine.”
Her beautiful eyes were on his face as she said the words, full of an expression which he failed to fathom. He wondered why he should have been ushered into a sanctuary forbidden to others. Yet was he not, also, prepared to admit her into the sanctuary of his inner life, to which none had ever gained admission?
The presence of the old man-servant, who did not leave the room, restrained more intimate conversation. He found himself wondering what they would say when at last they were really alone.
She talked of the beauty of the surrounding country; the wild hills, the heather; the pine woods, full of health-giving fragrance.
He told her of his walking tours.
“It is the only holiday I care for; to walk and walk, alone with Nature, from sunrise to sunset. Usually I reach an inn, by nightfall; but it does not trouble me if I don’t. On warm nights, I would just as soon sleep in the open.” He looked up, with the rare smile which softened his face into extraordinary sweetness. “I am afraid you are harbouring a tramp, Lady Tintagel.”
She met the smile with her own. “Am I?” Her voice dropped very low. “My tramp has tramped a long way to reach harbour.”