“Why—why are you stopping me like that? Oh, I beg your pardon; good-morning!” she cried hastily, and in a quick, furtive way she swept the tears from her eyes, and wiped her pretty little nose, which crying was turning of a pinky hue.
“Was I stopping you?” he said, speaking mechanically, and glancing straight before him. “I have been out all night with a patient six miles away.”
“Indeed!” said Lucy, hastily; “yes, it is a beautiful morning.”
She went by him without trusting herself to look in his face.
“If I did so, I should burst out sobbing,” she said to herself.
But by the time Lucy had gone half a score yards, Oldroyd was by her side, the pony keeping step with her, pace for pace, while the little woman’s breast was heaving with love, sorrow and despair.
“What will he think? what will he think?” she kept saying to herself as she longed to lay her hands in his, and to tell him that it was no fault of hers, but an accident that Captain Rolph had met her during her walk.
But she could not tell him—she dared not. It was like a confession that she cared for his opinion more than for that of anybody in the world. It would be unmaidenly, and degrading, and strange; and there was nothing for her to do but assume anger and annoyance, and treat Oldroyd as if he had been playing the part of spy.
A very weak conclusion, no doubt, but it was the only one at which, in her misery, she arrived.
The sun was shining now from a pure, blue sky, the birds were darting beneath the trees, where the long spider webs hung, strung with jewels, that flashed and glowed as they were passing fast away. There was a delicious aroma, too, in the soft breeze that floated from among the gloomy pines; but to those who went on, side by side, it was as if the morning had become overcast; all was stormy and grey, and life was in future to be one long course of desolation and despair. Nature was at her best, and all was beautiful; but Lucy could not see a ray of hope in the far-off future. Philip Oldroyd could see a gloomy, wasted life—the life of a man who had trusted and believed; but to find that the woman was weak and vain as the rest of her sex.