The blood rushed in full tide from Cosmo’s heart, as it had not for many a day, and coloured all his thin face. He drew himself up, and rose with the look of one ready for love’s sake to meet danger joyously. But Joan threw her arms round him now, and held him.
“No, no!” she said; “—this way! this way!” and letting him go, darted into the pathless shrubbery, sure he would follow her.
Cosmo hated turning his back on any person or thing, but the danger here was to Joan, and he must do as pleased her. He followed instantly.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE GARDEN-HOUSE.
She threaded and forced her way swiftly through the thick-grown shrubs, regardless of thorns and stripping twigs. It was a wilderness for many yards, but suddenly the bushes parted, and Cosmo saw before him a neglected building, overgrown with ivy, of which it would have been impossible to tell the purpose, for it was the product of a time when everything was made to look like something else. The door of it, thick with accumulated green paint, stood half open, as if the last who left it had failed in a feeble endeavour to shut it. Like a hunted creature Joan darted in, and up the creaking stair before her. Cosmo followed, every step threatening to give way under him.
The place was two degrees nearer ruin than his room. Great green stains were on the walls; plaster was lying here and there in a heap; the floors, rotted everywhere with damp, were sinking in all directions. Yet there had been no wanton destruction, for the glass in the windows was little broken. Merest neglect is all that is required to make of both man and his works a heap; for will is at the root of well-being, and nature speedily resumes what the will of man does not hold against her.
At the top of the stair, Joan turned into a room, and keeping along the wall, went cautiously to the window, and listened.
“I don’t think he will venture here,” she panted. “The gardener tells me his lordship seems as much afraid of the place as he and the rest of them. I don’t mind it much—in the daytime.—You are never frightened, Cosmo!”
As she spoke, she turned on him a face which, for all the speed she had made, was yet pale as that of a ghost.
“I don’t pretend never to be frightened,” said Cosmo; “all I can say is, I hope God will help me not to turn my back on anything, however frightened I may be.”