“Yes, it resembles a hop. I suppose the seeds are between the little scales. I can fancy it fluttering along the ground like yon leaf.”
“Yes,” he said, delightedly, and then, pleased with her comprehension of his thought, he looked far across the field. After all Mabella had not been in such a hurry to get to the house. She was running up and down like a child with the little brown calves in their special paddock near the house. Her sunbonnet was in her hand, her hair glittered in the sun like ripe wheat. From her Sidney’s eyes turned to Vashti, and his very heart stood still, for dimming the splendour of her eyes two great tears hung between her eyelids. There was no quiver of lip or cheek, no tremour of suppressed sobs; her bosom seemed frozen, so statuesque was her pose.
“Vashti!” he said. It was the first time he had called her by name—used thus the one word was eloquent.
“Don’t!” she said. “I—will—come—back to the house presently.”
Sidney, his heart wrung, took his dismissal without further speech. He went a few steps from her, then turning went swiftly back.
Her tense attitude had relaxed. She was leaning against the grey bars of the fence, a crimsoned bramble twining round one of the upright supports hung above her as a vivid garland.
“Vashti!” he cried, “I can’t leave you like this.”
“Not if I wish it?” she asked, and gave him a fleeting smile, beautiful as the opalescent glimmer of the sun through rain.
It shook the man to his soul. He stood for a moment blinded by the glamour of her beauty, then left her again. This time he did not look behind, but strode triumphantly across the fields, for he felt that smile had given him definite hope.