Lizzie dropt into her seat in silence, and began in a mechanical way to eat her dinner. She was terribly disappointed, but she did not dream of disputing her cousin’s decision. He was master in that house; and she would not have cared to go to the barn without Larry. Half the pleasure would be gone with his absence. He did not seem to see that.
‘Mother can take you up, Liz, if she has a mind to,’ he said, presently.
‘I take her along of me!’ cried Mrs Barnes, ‘when I haven’t so much as a clean kerchief to pin across my shoulders. You’re daft, Larry. I haven’t been to such a thing as a dance since I laid your father in the churchyard, and if our Liz can’t go without me she must stop at home.’
‘I don’t want to go, indeed I don’t, not without Larry,’ replied the blind girl, earnestly.
‘And what more did Miss Rosa say to you?’ demanded her aunt, inquisitively.
‘We talked about the sands, aunt. She’d been galloping all over them this morning, and I told her how dangerous they were beyond Corston Point, and we was getting on so nice together, when some one came and interrupted us.’
‘Some one! Who’s some one?’ said Laurence Barnes, quickly.
‘I can’t tell you; I never met him before.’
‘’Twas a man, then?’
‘Oh yes! ’twas a man—a gentleman! I knew that, because there were no nails in his boots, and he didn’t give at the knees as he walked.’