“How dare you say such a thing?” I cried. “You have no right to utter it even if you think it. You are giving way to the most cruel prejudice against a man whose only fault is that he cannot contentedly lead the dull life his neighbors do. I suppose you think, like the villagers, that to play the violin is an impious action, and that it is a shocking thing for him to go to races.”
“If he did nothing worse than that, I should think no worse of him than you do, Miss Christie. But I think you will allow that a man who has lived within half a mile of another man for nearly three years must know more of his character than a young innocent girl who has seen him at his best only for a month.”
“But you cannot judge a man fairly until you have seen him continually in his own home. I have seen Mr. Rayner among his family; I have played for him, walked with him, had long talks with him; and I must surely know him better than you, who have only an ordinary outside acquaintance with him.”
Mr. Reade drew himself up very stiffly, and the color rushed to his forehead. He was getting really angry.
“No doubt, Miss Christie, you know him a great deal better than I do. I have never played for him, and I have not found either talks or walks with him particularly delightful. But then I dare say he did not try so hard to be agreeable to me as he did to you.”
He said this in a sneering tone, which brought the hot blood to my face. I tried to answer, but my voice would not come. I turned away sharply, and left him, with an agony of anger and pain at my heart which would have made him remorseful indeed if he could have guessed what his words had inflicted. As it was, he followed me a few steps down the drive, with apologies to which I was too angry and too much hurt to listen.
“Don’t speak to me now,” I said—“I can’t bear it;” and, turning off rapidly into a side-path, I left him, and fled away through the alleys into the house.
Luckily I managed to keep back tears, so that I could return to the drawing-room with the flowers I had gathered before they began to wonder why I had been so long. Mrs. Rayner told me that the note from Mrs. Manners which Mr. Reade had brought was to ask that the articles which we were preparing for the “sale”—a sort of bazaar on a small scale which was one of the attractions of the annual school-treat—should be sent in to her within a week, as they had to be ticketed and arranged before the sale-day arrived, and whether Miss Christie would be so kind as to give her services at the stall; and, if so, whether she would call upon Mrs. Manners within the next few days to settle what should be her share of the work. I was delighted at the thought of this little excitement, and, although Mr. Rayner warned me that I should have nothing nicer to do than to see the pretty trifles I had worked fingered by dirty old women who would not buy them, and to have hot tea poured over me by clumsy children if I helped at the feast, I would not be frightened by the prospect.
That evening I debated with myself whether it was not too damp and swampy still for me to go and peep at my nest and see if the water had subsided and left the top of the bricks dry. I chose afterwards to think that it was some supernatural instinct which led me to decide that I would put on my goloshes and go.
When I got there, I found on the bough which formed my seat a basket of Gloire de Dijon roses, and the stalk of the uppermost one was stuck through a little note. I never doubted those roses were for me; I only wondered who had put them there. I looked searchingly around me in all directions before I took up the rose which carried the note and carefully slipped it off. It contained these words—