Their eyes flashed into each other. She felt as if she must throw herself on to his saddle to be nearer him at any cost.
"What do you mean by that, dear little comrade?" he roared.
"And what do you mean by calling me 'dear little comrade'?" she retorted.
Then they turned their horses and walked them slowly and in silence homewards.
CHAPTER XIX
For a long time the threshing-machine had been in tune for its autumn song. Far beyond the courtyard, penetrating every wall and hedge, its melancholy hum was now heard. There was no suggestion in it of golden harvest blessings and consolidated sunshine. Like an Æolian harp it moaned and howled from morn to eve in the storm-tossed branches. Sometimes it seemed to shriek as if the sheaves of grain it tore and tortured had found a voice wherewith to express their agony.
Once more Lilly's soul was so full of dreamy bliss that she heard in this music nothing but a seductive yearning. It impregnated her morning slumber, and often she lay with closed eyes half awake so as to listen the better to the monotonous singsong. And all the time he was in her thoughts. What she had always wanted was now hers--a playmate, a comrade; someone to rejoice and grumble with; someone who confessed all his sins to her, the very blackest, and then received a laughing absolution. Then whatever he did, he himself was not guilty; it was the youth in him that sinned, the same sweet, wicked youth that charged her own soul with melancholy and filled her body with thrills, which dominated them both like a tormenting deity, smiling on one and frowning on the other.
Yes, he must be saved; saved from his own folly, from that fatal cynicism of his which threatened to enmesh him in a network of vulgar intrigues. There was no silencing the rumours of the sort of life he was leading. She had only to set foot in the servants' quarters to hear the stream of unsavoury gossip of which he was the subject. All that must be ended. Her first interference was to be but the beginning of the great mission she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, standing in his path with raised hands to ward off all horrid temptations, so that he should become as pure and devoid of evil desires as herself.
So she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing-machine's melody.
The first ride outside the castle gates, though taken without leave, was praised and approved; permission was given for others to follow. But Lilly hesitated. She would like to be sure of her cantering powers, she said, before venturing on unknown ground. The truth was, she was dying for another such hour, and only lacked the courage to hurry it on.