It was a pity, and rather absurd too, that she should not have been able to keep Stuart and Merle.
—“What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m going, that’s all.”
She raised her eyebrows in delicate scorn, but made no further comment. Nor did she move when she heard the door close behind him.
“He needn’t have been afraid,” with a finer appreciation of his mood than he had given her credit for.
Miss Esther looked up sharply from her knitting, at the rush of feet on the stairs outside, a slammed door, a gate swinging wide on its hinges.
“It’s Mr. Heron. And he has gone. How very strange, without saying good-bye. And what is Peter about, not to see him off? Dear me, foolish young people, they must have quarrelled.”
“He will come back,” murmured Chavvy, in concordance with her leitmotif.
Not yet, reflected Stuart rebelliously, as the train bore him from Thatch Lane. Barely six weeks since that night in Cornwall,—surely the shears need not yet be employed. But having started at such extreme tension, it was utterly impossible that their love should be of long endurance. He had felt the first slackening this evening; the first desire to be quit of her presence; the first distaste at any of her actions. He must disengage her from the background of orderly respectability; search in his mind for the scene wherein he would most desire to place her image; could not visualize any sort of setting ... merely a scamper of wind, and a voice—his own voice—saying authoritatively to someone: “Get her out of irons, you ass! you must get a way on before you turn her at the bank....”
That was it—exactly it! they had got their boat into irons, he and Peter; must get a way on before they rushed ahead or—turned at the bank. In either case, get a way on.