“May I assist you, Miss Carew?” said the land baron deferentially, offering his arm to the young girl, whose pale but observant face disclosed new demur and inquiry.
“But you said we would go right on?” she returned, drawing back with implied dissent.
“When the horses are changed! If you will step out, the carriage will be driven to the barn.”
Reluctantly she obeyed, and as she did so, the patroon and the coachman exchanged pithy glances.
“Look sharp!” commanded the master, sternly. “Oh, he won’t run away,” added Mauville quickly, in answer to her look of surprise. “He knows I could find him, and”––fingering his revolver––“will not disoblige me. Later we’ll hear the rogue’s story.”
The man’s averted countenance smothered a clandestine smile, as he touched the horses with his whip and turned them toward the barn, leaving the patroon and his companion alone on the broad portico. Sweeping from a distant grove of slender poplars and snowy birch a breeze bore down upon them, suddenly bleak and frosty, and she shivered in the nipping air.
“You are chilled!” he cried. “If you would but go into the house while we are waiting! Indeed, if you do not, I shall wonder how I have offended you! It will be something to remember”––half lightly, half seriously––“that you have crossed my threshold!”
He stood at the door, with such an undissembled smile, his accents so regretful, that after a moment’s hesitation, Constance entered, followed by the patroon. Sweeping aside the heavy draperies from the window, he permitted the golden shafts of the ebbing day to enter the hall, gleaming on the polished floors, the wainscoting and the furniture, faintly illuminating the faded pictures and weirdly revealing the turnings of the massive stairway. No wonder a half-shudder of apprehension seized the young actress in spite of her self-reliance and courage, as she entered the solemn and mournful place, where past grandeur offered nothing save morbid memories and where the frailty of existence was significantly written! After that Indian summer day the sun was sinking, angry and fiery, as though presaging a speedy reform in the vagaries of the season and an immediate return to the legitimate surroundings of October.
Involuntarily the girl moved to the window, where the light rested on her brown tresses, and as Mauville watched that radiance, shifting and changing, her hair alight with mystic color, the passion that had prompted him to this end was stirred anew, dissipating any intrusive doubts. The veering and flickering sheen seemed but a web of entangling irradiation. A span of silence became an interminable period to her, with no sight of fresh horses nor sign of preparation for the home journey.