“If you say another word, I shall box your ears!” said Pen indignantly. “I would not have believed you could have grown into such a stupid, tiresome creature! I never met Lydia Daubenay in my life until last night, and if you don’t believe me you may go and ask her!”
He looked rather taken aback, and said in an uncertain tone: “But if you did not know her, how came you to be with her in the wood last night?”
“That was chance. The silly little thing swooned, and I—”
“She is not a silly little thing!” interrupted Piers, firing up.
“Yes, she is, very silly. For what must she do, upon reaching home, but tell her Papa that it was not you she had gone to meet, but me!”
This announcement surprised him. His bewildered grey eyes sought enlightenment in Pen’s face; he said with a rueful grin: “Oh Pen, do sit down and explain! You never could tell a story so that one could make head or tail of it!”
She came away from the table, and sat down on the window-seat. After a pained glance at her attire, Piers seated himself beside her. Each took critical stock of the other, but whereas Pen looked Piers frankly over, he surveyed her rather shyly, and showed a tendency to avert his gaze when it encountered hers.
He was a well-favoured young man, not precisely handsome, but with a pleasant face, a good pair of shoulders, and easy, open manners. Since he was four years her senior, he had always seemed to her, in the old days, very large, far more experienced than herself, and quite worthy of being looked up to. She was conscious, as she sat beside him on the window-seat, of a faint feeling of disappointment. He seemed to her little more than a boy, and instead of assuming his old mastery in his dealings with her, he was obviously shy, and unable to think of anything to say. Their initial encounter had of course been unfortunate, but Pen thought that he might, upon discovering her identity, have exhibited more pleasure at meeting her again. She felt forlorn all at once, as though a door had been shut in her face. A vague suspicion that what was behind the shut door was not what she had imagined only made her the more melancholy. To hide it, she said brightly: “It is such an age since I saw you, and there is so much to say! I don’t know where to begin!”
He smiled, but there was a pucker between his brows. “Yes, indeed, but it seems so strange! Why did she say she had gone out to meet you, I wonder?”
It was apparent to Pen that Miss Daubenay possessed his thoughts to the exclusion of everyone else. Repressing a strong desire to favour him with her opinion of that young lady, she recounted as briefly as she could what had passed between her and Lydia in the orchard. Any expectation she might have had of his viewing his betrothed’s conduct in the same light as she did was banished by his exclaiming rapturously: “She is such an innocent little thing! It is just like her to have said that! I see it all now!”