“You do not know her nature,” he assured her. “There is nothing weak or commonplace in it. One does not talk to her as to an ordinary woman—as you yourself said. I begged her to join her life to mine, and I put the plea on the highest possible grounds. All that I have repeated to you, and much more, I said to her—how great was my need of her, how lofty her character seemed to me, how all my life I should revere her, and gain strength and inspiration from being with her.”
“H—m,” said Kathleen.
“Do you mean—?” he began, regarding his companion wonderingly—“was that not enough? Remember the kind of woman she is—proud of her independence, occupied with large thoughts, not to be appealed to by any but the highest motives—a creature who disdains the sentimental romances of inferior women—do you mean that there should have been something more? I do love her—and should I have told her so in so many words?”
“I’m afraid that’s our foible,” she made answer. On the face that she turned to him, something like the old merry light was shining. “You goose!” she scolded at him, genially.
His eyes sparkled up as with a light from her own. “Oh, I will make some excuse, and get away from these people, and find her,” he cried. “She will be returning, if not here, then to the inn, down below the church, don’t you think? There would be nothing out of the way in my riding down, would there? Or if I sent a man down with a letter, appealing to her not to go away—telling her why? There is no earthly reason why she should not stop here at the Castle. Her sister is here—why, of course, she belongs quite to the family party. How dull of me not to have thought of that! Of course, Cora can go and fetch her.”
“I think I would leave Cora out of it,” Kathleen advised him. “There is nothing that you cannot do better yourself. Come here! Do you see that patch of reddish stain on the hill there, above the poplars where the iron has colored the rock? Well, look to the right, on the ledge just a bit higher up—there is Miss Bailey. I have been watching her for some minutes. She has been round the hill; the path she is on will lead her to the Mere Copse—and to the heath beyond the orchards.”
His eyes had found the moving figure, microscopic yet unmistakable in the sunshine against the verdant face of the hill—and they dwelt upon it for a meditative moment.
Then he turned to Kathleen, and took her hand, and almost wrung it in his own. “Do let us go in!” he urged her, with exultant eagerness.