“You can’t go back all that way. It’s absurd. You talk of going off to-day, why, good heavens, it takes time even to start on a journey like that. You have to book your passage in a ship—and how are you to go alone?”
“I don’t know,” said Phyl.
His voice became soft. It was the first time in his life, perhaps, that he had spoken with tenderness, and the effect was perfectly magical.
“You are not going,” he said, “you are not; indeed, I want you far too much to let you go; there’s nothing else I want at all in the world. I don’t count anything worth loving beside you.”
No reply.
He turned.
The coloured groom was walking the horses, they were only a few yards away. He went to the man and gave him some money with the order to return to Charleston and go back to Grangersons by train, or at least to the station that was ten miles from Grangerville.
Then as the man went off along the road he stood holding the near horse by the bridle and talking to Phyl.
“You can’t walk back all that way; put your foot on the step and get in, leave all your trouble right here. I’ll see that you never have any trouble again. Put your foot on the step.”
Phyl looked away down the road.