She wandered along listlessly amongst the thickly crowded elms and firs of the forest that crowned the slopes of the dell, musing on her own sad thoughts, for her heart felt very weary. Everything had gone wrong with her that day; Tom had not spoken two words to her, and she did not know whether he wanted to speak to her at all. He was very unkind; he might, at least, have said something after what had passed between them the other day! Then, too, the whole thing had bored her, and she wished she had never come! Lady Inskip also had been very snappish with her—even rude, she thought, and though Lizzie, with all her gentleness, was not “one to be put upon with impunity,” and could have held her own against the campaigner at any other time: still to-day she had quite lost her natural spirit, and did not try to turn aside a single shaft of the many hurled by her implacable foe.
Lizzie was sadly out of heart. Rambling along, she at length came to a little open glade at some distance from where the picnickers were making merry.
Here, as she turned round the trunk of a gnarled old elm, all covered with ivy, which had previously obscured this open glade from her view, whom should she see, standing there in gloomy solitude, and looking up at the fleecy white clouds sailing over head, but the very person who filled her thoughts—Tom Hartshorne himself, and no other.
Now was the time, one would think, for an explanation between the pair; but the Fates willed it otherwise.
“That young imp,” when he left the picnickers, sallied off like a gallant young sportsman, as he fancied himself, with his “gun upon his shoulder,” and a brandy flask, which he used for a shot pouch, instead of a “bayonet by his side,” in the words of the affecting ballad of “Jeanette and Jeanot.”
He penetrated into the depths of the wood, firing at everything that happened to be a trifle larger than a butterfly or humble bee; but although Mortimer thought he took steady aim at the several little feathered songsters against whom he had murder in his heart, the gun, which was something like the Irishman’s that could “shoot round a corner,” never brought down anything.
At length he came to a dense thicket, just on the borders of the little open glade where Tom and Lizzie were about to meet.
A particularly fine fat thrush hopped on a twig in the midst of the thicket; and, as it was only about a yard from the muzzle of his gun, the young imp was more successful this time. He fired and brought down his bird; but he also brought down something else which he had not bargained for.
Tom was just advancing with outstretched hand towards Lizzie, glad of the opportunity for which he had been longing all day.
Whiz! bang! more than half the charge of the young imp’s shot struck him in the side, and Tom fell nearly senseless at Lizzie’s feet.