'I do not.'
'It means eternal love and constancy.'
'Indeed,' responded Eveline, with a tone of indifference. She felt inclined to detach the bouquet from her dress, and restore it to the giver or deposit it on one of the iron shelves, but as that might have implied that she understood too much, she simply quitted the conservatory and went once more upon the terrace.
'The air is chilly here after the hot atmosphere of the conservatories,' said Sir Harry, greatly encouraged by the acceptance of his flowers; 'and that Shetland shawl is only an apology for a wrap over your head, though you look charming in it—permit me,' he added, as he drew it closer round her.
Their eyes met as he did so, and she read an expression in his downward gaze that made her pale cheek crimson, and then grow pale again; and to avoid anything more she re-entered the house.
'It is because I am married to an old man that he dares to treat me thus, and so thinks little of me,' she began to reflect—'an old man whose eyes are ever full of angry reproach about poor Evan, who never wronged him, even in thought. Oh, how hateful, how loathsome my life is! If luxurious it is duplicity, all!'
She actually began to think she would go away somewhere—where her father and husband would never find her—change her name and be a governess or something of that kind. The idea of suicide or anything so dreadful, in all her sorrow, bitterness, and humiliation of spirit, never occurred to her for a moment. She only hoped that God would direct her, pardon her for these rebellious feelings against fate, and let her live her own way and then die.
Why did she not run away before her absurd marriage? she thought now, and before her young life was so utterly wrecked by it? But she forgot how, under the motherly care and authority of Lady Aberfeldie, she had always been in a certain constraint and awe, and how her own sudden jealousy of Evan Cameron had helped to bring that catastrophe about.
But this growing admiration on the part of Sir Harry Hurdell was a new experience in life to her.
She was justly incensed by it, and knew that he was presuming upon her youth, her husband's age, and the too apparent aspect of an ill-assorted marriage. Their visit must be cut short at all risks; but what excuse was she to make to Sir Paget; for, with her knowledge of his jealousy of one who was dead, how was she to enlighten him on the subject of Sir Harry, whose manner proved to her somewhat obnoxious.