They reached the wind-driven fir-tree under which Roddick and Janet Laverack had kept their Christmas tryst. The sun was warm on Frender's Folly, but no sunshine could overlay the brooding sadness of the place; rather, there seemed an added desolation, as when light shines dumbly on a dead man's eyes. Sybil stopped, and pointed across the smooth-shaven lawns that lay beneath them.
"Isn't it like a grave? Griff, you don't know how eerie it is down there; I dread going back to it."
"Come, Sybil, don't talk about graves in the middle of a September day. The Folly is well enough; eat a good lunch, and you'll find it twice as desirable a place. Good-bye; I must turn back here."
She clutched at him with her little gloved hands.
"You shan't go in this way, you shan't! Eat a good lunch—is that your farewell, Griff, after—after all that has been?"
"And drink a half-bottle of Burgundy; I forgot that." Not at any cost was he going to have a repetition of the scene on Marshcotes Moor. And that unwarrantable pity was beginning to touch him again.
She looked from the castle keep to the sweeping purple of the moor. Twice she was on the point of speaking, and twice she stopped herself. Then she crept close to him, and held up her face, and pursed out her baby-mouth.
"Sweetheart, have you no pity?" she murmured.
He took her two hands and touched them lightly with his lips.
"It would do us no good, child. Go back to the old life; you'll forget me soon enough, if you only make up your mind to it. There, don't cry! I'm a brute, and there is an end of it. Good-bye."