The silence was dreadful. Nancy endeavoured to rise, but her limbs would not do their office. Then, her eyes fixed on the grass, she became aware that Tarrant himself had stood up.
‘Where are the children?’ he was saying absently.
He descried them afar off with Miss. Morgan, and began to saunter in that direction. As soon as his back was turned, Nancy rose and began to walk towards the house. In a few moments Jessica and the girls were with her.
‘I think we must go,’ she said.
They entered, and took leave of Mrs. Baker, who sat alone in the drawing-room.
‘Did you say good-bye to Mr. Tarrant?’ Jessica asked, as they came forth again.
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t. But I suppose it doesn’t matter.’
Nancy had thought of telling her friend what she had done, of boasting that she had asked the impossible question. But now she felt ashamed of herself, and something more than ashamed. Never again could she enter this garden. And it seemed to her that, by a piece of outrageous, of wanton, folly, she had for ever excluded herself from the society of all ‘superior’ people.