The distance was so short that it was decided to walk back through the moonlit lane, and as Trevor and Pratt accompanied the party, it was a matter of course that Fin should walk papa off first, Lady Rea following with Pratt, and Tiny lingering behind in the silvered arcades—dreamy, loving, too happy to speak, and feeling that if life would but always be the same, how could they ever tire?
Here, in the rugged lane, all was black darkness, and the gnarled tree trunks seemed to spring from sable velvet. A few yards farther, a sheaf of silver arrows seemed shot down through the foliage upon the laced ferns that rose like a tiny forest of palms; down by their side there was the rippling tinkle of water, gurgling amongst stones; and again a few steps, and a pool shone like molten silver. Above all, the air was soft, humid, and balmy; and love seemed breathed in the gentle wind that barely stirred the leaves. They had no need to talk, for it was very sweet; and they could foresee no black clouds to come sweeping across their horizon.
Tolcarne gates at last, new and crest-crowned—good-bye—and then out cigars, and a matter-of-fact walk back, the young men both too dreamy to speak. And after a brief “Good night, Dick, old fellow”—“Good night, Franky, old boy,” each sought his room—Trevor thinking the while of Lady Rea’s words, and how that he had hardly seen Polly lately, while he had been too happy in his love to so much as think of Mrs Lloyd and her baffled plans. For her part, she seemed to have avoided him ever since she had heard of the engagement that he had made.
“Ah, well,” he said, smiling, as he gazed from the open window at the moonlit shimmering sea, “all these things come right in the end. What need have I to trouble, with life so pleasurably spread out before me? Heigho! I don’t deserve such good luck; but I think I can bear it like a good man and true. I wonder, though, whether Frank really cares for little Fin!”
Ten minutes after, Trevor was dreaming happily of his love, without a sign of cloud or storm in his sunlit fancies; but they were gathering fast the while.
A Little Confession.
But Mrs Lloyd, though quiet for a time, and letting matters rest till the termination of Vanleigh and Sir Felix Landells’s visit, was anything but dormant.
The fact was, that Vanleigh had been in the way upon more than one occasion. When Polly had been sent for a walk in the hope of enchanting the “young master,” Vanleigh had met her, and been so attentive that the girl had come back at last, sobbing and almost defiant, telling her aunt that sooner than be so treated she would run away back to the mountains in Wales.
This put a stop to it for the time, and Aunt Lloyd waited, hearing rumours that the two London visitors were engaged to the young ladies of Tolcarne, and rubbing her hands thereon, for these were threatened rivals out of the way.