CHAPTER XI.
AGATHA'S DECISION.
It was with an expectancy which was slightly toned down by misgivings that Hawtrey drove over to the homestead where Agatha was staying the next afternoon. The misgivings were, perhaps, not unnatural, for he had been chilled by the girl's reception of him on the previous day, and her manner afterwards had, he felt, left something to be desired. Indeed, when she drove away with Mrs. Hastings he had felt himself a somewhat injured man.
His efforts to mend the harness, and extricate the waggon in the dark, which occupied him for an hour, had, however, partly helped to drive the matter from his mind, and when he reached his homestead rather late that night he went to sleep, and slept soundly until sunrise, which was significant. Hawtrey was, at least, a man who never brooded over his troubles beforehand, and this was, perhaps, one reason why he did not always cope with them successfully when they could no longer be avoided.
When he had made his breakfast he, however, became sensible of a certain pique against both Mrs. Hastings and the girl, which led him to remember that he had no hired man, and that there was a good deal to be done. He decided that it might be well to wait until the afternoon before he called on them, and for several hours he drove his team through the crackling stubble. His doubts and irritation grew weaker as he did so, and when at length he drove into sight of Hastings's homestead, his buoyant temperament was commencing to reassert itself. Clear sunshine streamed down upon the prairie out of a vault of cloudless blue, and he felt that after all any faint shadow that might have arisen between him and the girl could be readily swept away.
He was, however, a little less sure of this when he saw her. Agatha sat near an open window, in a scantily furnished match-boarded room, and she, at least, as it happened, had not slept at all. Her eyes were heavy, but there was a look of resolution in them which seemed out of place just then, and it struck him that she had lost the freshness which had characterised her in England.
She rose when he came in, and then, to his astonishment, drew back a pace or two when he moved impulsively towards her.
"No," she said, with a hand raised restrainingly, "you must hear what I have to say, and try to bear with me. It is a little difficult, Gregory, but it must be said at once."
The man stood still, almost awkwardly, looking at her with consternation in his face, and for a moment she looked steadily at him. It was a painful moment, for she was just then gifted with a clearness of vision which she almost longed to be delivered from. She saw that the impression which had brought her a vague sense of dismay on the previous afternoon was wrong. The trouble was that he had not changed at all. He was what he had always been, and she had merely deceived herself when she had permitted her girlish fancy to endue him with qualities and graces which he had, it seemed, never possessed. There was, however, no doubt that she had still a duty towards him.
He spoke first with a trace of hardness in his voice.