Olivia Denison’s thoughts on the morning after the haymaking, were entirely occupied with Vernon Brander, his illness, the possibility of his innocence, and the chances of his escape if guilty; so that when, on entering the poultry yard with her basket on her arm, she found Fred Williams, amusing himself by setting two cocks to fight each other, she uttered a cry of unmistakable annoyance and astonishment.
“You look as if you hadn’t expected to see me, and as if, by Jove, you hadn’t wanted to!” said he, frankly. As she made no answer, but only raised her eyebrows he went on—“Don’t you remember I said I should be here this morning?”
“I had forgotten it, or only remembered it as a kind of nightmare.”
“Do you mean me to take your rudeness seriously?” asked Fred, after a pause in which he had at last struggled with the amazing fact that he had met a girl to whom his admiration, and all the glorious possibilities it conveyed, meant absolutely nothing.
“As seriously as I have always taken yours.”
Fred was silent again for some moments, during which Olivia went on throwing handfuls of grain to the chickens, and calling softly “Coop-coop-coop-coop!” in a most persuasive and unconcerned manner.
“And you really mean that this is your last answer? I can tell you, it’s your last chance with me?”
Olivia turned, making the most of her majestic height, and looked down on him with the loftiest disdain.
“I assure you that if it were my ‘last chance,’ as you call it, not only with you, but with anybody, I should say just the same.”
Fred Williams leaned against the wall of the yard, turned out the heterogeneous contents of one of his pockets, and began turning them over with shaking fingers to hide his mortification.