'Pray to God. Do not beg of me, my lord. I have my brother and my little son. No more of husband for me! God has given me a friend, too, —a man of humble heart, my brother's friend, my dear Rebecca's husband. He can take them from me: no one but God. See the splendid sky we have.'
With those words she barred the gates on him; at the same time she bestowed the frank look of an amiable face brilliant in the lively red of her exercise, in its bent-bow curve along the forehead, out of the line of beauty, touching, as her voice was, to make an undertone of anguish swell an ecstasy. So he felt it, for his mood was now the lover's. A torture smote him, to find himself transported by that voice at his ear to the scene of the young bride in thirty-acre meadow.
'I propose to call on Captain Kirby-Levellier tomorrow, Carinthia,' he said. 'The name of his house?'
'My brother is not now any more in the English army,' she replied. 'He has hired a furnished house named Stoneridge.'
'He will receive me, I presume?'
'My brother is a courteous gentleman, my lord.'
'Here is the church, and here we have to part for today. Do we?'
'Good-bye to you, my lord,' she said.
He took her hand and dropped the dead thing.
'Your idea is, to return to Esslemont some day or other?'