Volume Two—Chapter Two.
“Impossible!”
“Claire—Miss Denville,” cried Richard Linnell, mastering the cruel thoughts suggested by Rockley’s words, “how dared that scoundrel insult you like this!”
“Hush!” said Claire agitatedly. “Don’t—pray don’t speak to me. I cannot bear it.”
“You are ill. You are faint. Let me help you over these bars and get you to one of the cottages.”
“No; I shall be better directly. Don’t speak to me now.”
She bent down, covered her face with her hands, and the tears came now in a passionate burst, while he went down on his knee beside her, laid one hand upon her arm, and, his doubts and suspicions all driven away by her grief, tried to whisper words of comfort as he bade her be calm.
Major Rockley had walked with jaunty military stride for the first two or three hundred yards with assumed calmness; then he gave vent to his rage in a torrent of oaths, and strode on rapidly out of sight, beating the air fiercely with his whip, and leaving the fields clear of his presence as Richard Linnell knelt by the sobbing girl.