“If you are determined to go on I shall accompany you, particularly as I wish to talk to you on a subject of great importance. Have I your permission?”
Quite lacking in vanity or worldliness, it was impossible that he should be unaware of his importance as a young, wealthy, and unmarried peer, and he shrewdly suspected that Mrs. Nunn would make an exception in his favour on market day in Charlestown.
Anne, wondering what he could have to say to her, led the way past the church to the open road that encircled the island. Then she moderated her pace and looked up at him from the deeps of her bonnet. Her gaze was cooler and more impersonal than he was wont to encounter, but it crossed his burdened mind that a blooming face even if unfashionably sunburnt, and a supple vigorous body were somewhat attractive after a surfeit of dolls with their languid fine-lady airs and affectation of physical delicacy; which he, being no fool, suspected of covering fine appetites and stubborn selfishness. But while he was young enough to admire the fresh beauty of his companion, it was the strength and decision, the subtle suggestion of high-mindedness, in this young lady’s aspect, which had led him to a resolution that he now proceeded to arrange in words as politic as might be.
“It may seem presumptuous to speak after so short an acquaintance——”
“Not after your rescue last night. I had like to have died of embarrassment. I am not accustomed to have half a room gazing at me.”
“You will,” he said gallantly. “But it is kind of you to make it easier. This is it. I have been—am—very unhappy about a friend of mine here. Of course you know the work of one, who, many believe, is our greatest poet—Byam Warner?”
Anne drew her breath in and her eyelashes together. “I have read his poems,” she said shortly.
“I see! Like many others you cannot dissociate the genius from the man. Because a fatal weakness——”
“What have I said, pray, that you should jump to such a conclusion?” She had recovered her breath but not her poise. “No one could admire him more than I. About his private life I know little and care less. He lives on this island, does he not?”