What those two said to one another, in the hushed half-hour while Ronnie waited for them in the tiny garden and Caroline Staley busied herself over the kitchen fire, only the bees, droning ceaselessly round the clematis, overheard.
5
It was very late for Chilworth Cove: past ten o'clock of a dull heavy night: the stars veiled: the purr of a torpid sea coming faint down the Ghyll. One by one the lights in the village windows had been extinguished. But light still poured from the windows of Honeysuckle Cottage; and through the light-motes, the smoke of a man's cigar outcurled in blue seashell whorls that hung long-time--meditative as the man--in the windless quiet.
Ronald Cavendish threw the butt of his cigar after the smoke-whorls, and turned to the two women in the room.
"The mater's right," he said. "We must make some move. But it's no earthly use writing to Jimmy. Jimmy can't help us. The only thing to be done is for me to go up to town and see H. B. myself."
Ever since Caroline had cleared away dinner, they had been discussing the problem of Brunton's inactivity. To Aliette, pride-bound, feeling herself--despite the new alliance with Julia Cavendish--still guilty, still the interloper, it seemed best that they should wait. Silently resenting, yet chiding herself all the while for her resentment, the whole discussion, she had held herself, whenever possible, aloof from it.
But now she could hold aloof no longer. No coward in her own love; willing, for herself, to take any and all risks; the suggested meeting filled her with apprehension for Ronnie.
"I beg you not to do that," she said.
"Why not?" Ronnie laughed. "He can't eat me."