The week which followed was one of ideal joy and holiday. Both knew, instinctively, that no after days could ever be quite as these first days. They were an experience which came not again, and must be realised and enjoyed with whole-hearted completeness.
At first Jim Airth talked with determination of a special licence, and pleaded for no delay. But Lady Ingleby, usually vague to a degree on all questions of law or matters of business, fortunately felt doubtful as to whether it would be wise to be married in a name other than her own; and, though she might have solved the difficulty by at once revealing her identity to Jim Airth, she was anxious to choose her own time and place for this revelation, and had set her heart upon making it amid the surroundings of her own beautiful home at Shenstone.
“You see, Jim,” she urged, “I have a few friends in town and at Shenstone, who take an interest in my doings; and I could hardly reappear among them married! Could I, Jim? It would seem such an unusual and unexpected termination to a rest-cure. Wouldn’t it, Jim?”
Jim Airth’s big laugh brought Miss Susie to the window. It caused sad waste of Susannah’s time, that her window looked out on the honeysuckle arbour.
“It might make quite a run on rest-cures,” said Jim Airth.
“Ah, but they couldn’t all meet you,” said Myra; and the look he received from those sweet eyes, atoned for the vague inaccuracy of the rejoinder.
So they agreed to have one week of this free untrammelled life, before returning to the world of those who knew them; and he promised to come and see her in her own home, before taking the final steps which should make her altogether his.
So they went gay walks along the cliffs in the breezy sunshine; and Myra, clinging to Jim’s arm, looked down from above upon their ledge.
They revisited Horseshoe Cove at low water, and Jim Airth spent hours cutting the hurried niches into proper steps, so as to leave a staircase to the ledge, up which people, who chanced in future to be caught by the tide, might climb to safety. Myra sat on the beach and watched him, her eyes alight with tender memories; but she absolutely refused to mount again.
“No, Jim,” she said; “not until we come here on our honeymoon. Then, if you wish, you shall take your wife back to the place where we passed those wonderful hours. But not now.”