“By walking fast, I dare say we shall escape it.” She did not, however, increase her pace. Her next remark was to suggest that he should turn back. “Aren’t you afraid that Sir Michael may hear that you have been walking with me? And through part of his own land!”
“It is very probable that he will hear of it,” said Wareham quietly.
“And you will be in disgrace!” She aimed at light ridicule, but there was a touch of sharpness in her tone, which told him that the old man’s ill opinion had stung her. The next moment she owned it. “If only I could see him! He must have got a distorted notion into his mind. Perhaps you share it still?” Gladly would he have accepted these invitations to the personal. All he dared say was that it was not unnatural that Hugh’s father should have brooded over his son’s disappointment.
“And his death has fixed it indelibly in his mind.”
Anne moved a little faster.
“Perhaps he lays that also to my charge?”
“He could not be so unjust.”
Suddenly she stood still and faced him, soft entreaty in her eyes.
“Mr Wareham, are you my friend?”
Was it the pallor of the gathering clouds which whitened his face? He stammered—