He tried to draw her towards him, but she struggled to get free and reach the stile in the tall hedge that separated them from the bare downs beyond.
The tears of rage and indignation were in Claire’s eyes as she felt her helplessness, and saw how thoroughly she was in Rockley’s power. There seemed to be nothing she could do but scream for help, and from that she shrank.
Turning suddenly upon him, with her eyes flashing, she exclaimed:
“Major Rockley! as a gentleman I ask you to cease this cowardly pursuit.”
“Claire Denville, as the woman I adore and have set my mind to win, I ask you to cease this silly heroic nonsense. My dear child, is it to make terms?”
She snatched her hand by an angry movement from his grasp, and reached the stile; but he was too quick for her, catching her and drawing her back to clasp her in his arms.
“You shall not say I wasted my opportunity,” he whispered. “If I am to be punished by you, it shall be for something more than words. This kiss is to be the first of millions that you shall pay me back, and—Curse the fellow!”
There was a quick step, a hand was laid on the stile, and Richard Linnell vaulted over, white with jealous anger. For, coming along the downs, he had seen Claire cross the stile, followed by Rockley, and, half mad with rage, he had gazed at them for a moment or two, and then, feeling that all was over, and that there was no more love for him in the world, since the woman he had worshipped could be so light as to make appointments with the greatest libertine in the town, he walked straight back for the parade.
It was all plain enough; there had been an understanding between Claire and the Major, and hence that serenade. But for the horrible accident that night Claire would have come to the window and answered to the musical call.
What a boyish, childish idiot he had been: dreaming always of a vain, weak, frivolous woman, whom he had in his blind idolatry endowed with all the beauties and virtues of her sex.