She stood up before him so flushed and handsome that the major felt as it were the whole of her little story.
“No,” he said quietly, “I have not told your grandmother about you; she has been telling me.”
With an angry, indignant look the girl swept by him and entered the cottage.
“Poor lass, she is very handsome,” said the major to himself, “and it seems as if her bit of life romance is not going so smoothly as it should. Hah! that was a capital drop of water; it gives one life. Crying in the woods, eh—after a signal that the old lady heard. Gipsy lad, eh? Bad sign—bad sign. Ah, well,” he added, with a sigh, “I’m getting too old a man to think of love affairs; but, somehow, I often wonder now that I did not marry.”
That thought came to him several times as he walked homeward over the boggy common, and rose again more strongly as he came in sight of The Firs and the grim, black mansion on the hillock. Fort Science, as he had jestingly called it, looked at times bright and sunny, and then dull, repulsive and cold.
The major reached home after his very long walk rather out of spirits; and his valet, unasked, fetched him a cup of tea.