“May I tell Hugh to hope?”
“Oh, no,” she said composedly. “Certainly not. My mind is absolutely made up. Urge him to think no more of me; above all, not to try to see me. It is quite useless.”
Wareham smiled.
“He will thank me.”
“If he does not, I shall,” she said softly; and again he was conscious of the strange throb which had surprised him before. This time it was slighter, and he did not look or speak, while in another moment she turned and began to climb the stony path.
Wareham followed slowly, more perturbed than he would have cared to own. He had failed in discomfiting her, as he had never doubted his power of doing, once they met; and though no blame had been cast on Hugh, he had an angry and unwilling feeling that if it was want of love which had broken off the marriage, the lover himself should have been the first to realise it. Hugh had never suffered him to suppose this could be the cause. He thrust away the feeling irritably. Was he to blame Hugh for the act of a heartless girl?
At the top of the path, a very poor old woman stood outside the hut, holding a goat by a cord. Anne, perhaps glad of the interruption, began to talk to her. Wareham stood a few feet off, and she presently came back to him.
“She is not so old as she looks. I thought her a hundred, but that was her husband who went down the path just now. I would ask her about the caterpillars, only I haven’t an idea what is Norwegian for caterpillar. Have you?”
He was as ignorant.
“She is not begging,” Anne continued, “though I am sure she is dreadfully poor, and in spite of all the laws of political economy, I shall give her a krone.”