They rode side by side to the seat they had sat upon before, and without saying much he helped her to alight and gave the reins of both horses to the black groom.
Once seated, however, he turned to her and said, gravely, "Of course, that remark of yours had to do with our conversation the last time we sat here?"
"Of course," agreed Diana, calmly. The intricacies of the task she had set herself were beginning to interest more than scare her, and she was not afraid as to her skill in handling van Hert.
"May I ask in what exact particular?"
"Merely that you are the man about to marry a woman you do not love."
He opened his lips to expostulate and deny, but she rested a little hand on his arm a moment and interrupted. "No, do not trouble to deny it. I should not have dared to say such a thing without being sure of my ground. Your face told me on Tuesday."
He was silent, feeling himself unaccountably in the grip of something he could no longer thwart.
"Now listen to me. When Meryl went to Rhodesia you did love her. I think she was all the world to you. So she was when she came back, at first. You were in haste to win her, and she consented to be engaged to you. Afterwards...." She paused.
"Well, afterwards?..." in a strained, unnatural voice.
"Afterwards you found in some vague way she was changed. You had won her, but you did not possess her. Something had happened. You seemed to have seized the substance and found it shadow. I seem to be talking like a book, but we will let that pass! Instead of trying to find out whether this really was the case, you attempted to hurry forward the wedding. That, I think, was weak of you."