He neither objected nor encouraged; and his self-respect was partly restored by standing aloof in a position of indifference. Anne, smiling, glanced at him between half-shut eyelids, and went off again. He followed. The old woman, almost beside herself with delight, seized her hand, and shook it with rapturous gratitude. Blessings of every kind were invoked, and showered also, undeservedly, upon Wareham. Then she made vigorous signs that Anne was to stay where she was, while she herself hobbled into the hut.
“What is to follow?” asked Wareham.
Anne shook her head. “I shall certainly wait and see. What can come out of that poor little place? Not!” She turned upon him a horrified face—“Oh, no!”
“What?”
“I believe—I am sure—she is bringing me a tumbler of goat’s milk! Of all things that I loathe—”
Her face was tragic. Wareham was prepared to see her decline the gift, but had to own to injustice. She took the tumbler, drank to the end, and thanked the old woman with a sweet courtesy. If, after it, she moved quickly away, she told Wareham that it was to rescue him from a similar fate. He owned that he could not have been so heroic, and that she had surprised him.
“What else was there to do?” she asked simply.
Her mood had changed. All the way back to the inn she talked gaily and lightly about the country, their fellow-travellers, and the children they met. He found his conception of her lost, not to be called back, and between this and that grew bewildered. There was nothing for it but to follow her lead, and to set Hugh’s wrongs on one side. They went there easily, and left the ground more pleasantly open, so that he reached the door in eager talk, and, what was worse, with desire for more.
He kept silence to the Ravenhills as to his morning, never even telling Mrs Ravenhill of the little cottage with pansied roof, which he had ostensibly sought for her. Something in him, something which he did not choose to admit, but which secretly controlled him, made him averse from admitting any one to the place where this morning he had met Anne: he told himself that he wished to put away the recollection of a painful incident. Painful it should have been, and must be.
It was Sunday; a little service was held in the salon. Afterwards, except at meals, Wareham saw no more of Miss Dalrymple. He went out and walked far over the hills with the clergyman, whose wife was at last tired, but whose own energy was unfailing. He carried it into botany, and though Wareham knew nothing of the subject, the triumph with which a rare discovery was hailed gave relish to the walk. Would Millie have liked something different? She made no complaint, but at supper chatted cheerfully of the cottages into which she had penetrated; the children’s shake of the hand for “tak” when she gave them sweets; the strings of fresh, kindly-faced women coming back from their walk of miles to the nearest church. Millie had won the children’s hearts, and the next morning, when, under a sky of tender northern blue, they started on their walk up the pass, they came smiling round, no longer in Sunday scarlet skirts and green aprons, but in work-a-day clothes, to wish her good-morning and farewell.