“I—I was afraid so,” she burst out, and impulsively hid her face for a moment in her hands.
She heard his breath come fast; she seemed to feel that his hands were near her, hovering over her, almost touching her; and she remained motionless. But when she looked up he was some paces away, busily employed digging holes in the ground with the point of his umbrella. As she looked up, their eyes met.
“Yes. You were right. It does interest me,” he said, gravely. Olivia’s face fell. At sight of this change in her expression, Mr. Brander’s composure suddenly gave way again—broke up altogether. He showed himself suddenly in an entirely new light, swayed by excitement so tempestuous that the girl realized for the first time the depths of passion which still remained in this man under the burnt-out crust. In a moment she recognized the fact that he was capable of impulses and of acts which she could neither measure nor understand. For good or for evil, his was a nature deeper and stronger than hers. This knowledge, so suddenly borne in upon her, gave her a new interest in, and respect for, him, even while it made her reluctantly admit that the possibility of his having committed a great crime was far clearer to her than before. All this flashed into her mind in a second of time, as his agitated face turned towards her just before the feelings which surged within him broke on his lips in hoarse, incoherent speech.
“I must tell you—Oh, God! Why should I not tell you? Who in the whole world deserves to hear the truth as you do? Listen!”
No need to tell the girl that. Her heart was in her eyes. She held her very breath in the intensity of a rush of feelings, which made her wet and cold from head to foot as she stood, unable to utter a word, waiting for the fatal explanation. He had come a step nearer to her, the first words of his confession were on his lips, when a bright, high, woman’s voice broke upon their ears. The sound acted on Vernon Brander like a stroke of paralysis. His right hand, raised in eager gesture, fell to his side; into his excited face came suddenly the vacant stare of idiotcy. As for Olivia, the tension on her weaker feminine nerves had been too great.
She drew a long sigh, and burst into tears. Then, before he could recover himself sufficiently to offer one word of comfort or apology, she muttered a hasty “good-night,” and hurried through the farmyard gate towards her home.
Vernon could only watch her retreating figure a little way, as an angle of the big barn that stood opposite the farmhouse soon hid her from sight. Then he went on with slow, dogged footsteps to meet his sister-in-law; for it was her voice which had disturbed his tete-a-tete with Miss Denison. The suspicions of the latter had already bore some fruit in his mind; for he asked himself whether Mrs. Brander had not come out on purpose to interrupt them. What other motive could bring that comfort-loving lady out into the damp and cold of a wet April evening? He dismissed the idea from his mind almost as soon as it entered; nevertheless, it was a just one.
Mrs. Brander had called on Mrs. Denison that afternoon, and had learnt, through the indiscretion of the latter’s husband, enough of the morning’s proceedings to fill her with anxiety and annoyance. The vicar managed to restrain her first impulse, which was to go straight to St. Cuthbert’s and see Vernon.
“You will be putting yourself in the wrong if you do that, my dear,” said Meredith, quietly. “If he thinks he has any cause of complaint against you, he is not the man to nurse it up silently. He is sure to come straight here on the first opportunity to ‘have it out’ with you. And then I have no doubt of your powers of making the rough places smooth again.”
Evelyn Brander submitted to her husband’s judgment, with a doubt which he made light of. A few months ago she could have made her brother-in-law take her own view of any matter; now there was an unpleasant possibility that he might take somebody else’s.