The words were hardly out of her mouth when a slender dusky figure that had been leaning against the edge of one of the numerous weirs that connect the river-tides with the streams of the water-meadows, came suddenly towards them and revealed herself as Philippa Renshaw.
Both the girls drew back in instinctive alarm. Nance was the first to recover.
“So you too are out to-night,” she said. “Linda got so tired of practising, so we—”
Philippa interrupted her: “Since we have met, Nance Herrick, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t talk a little. Or do you think the people about here would find that an absurd thing for us to do, as we’re both in love with the same man, and you’re going to marry him?”
She uttered these words so calmly and in so strange a voice that Nance for the moment was too startled to reply. She recovered herself quickly, however, and taking Linda by the arm, made as if she would pass her by, without further speech. But Philippa refused to permit this. With the slow dramatic movement always characteristic of her, she stepped into the middle of the path and stopped them. Linda, at this, hung back, trying to draw her sister away.
The two women faced one another in breathless silence. It was too dark for them to discern more than the vaguest outlines of each other’s features, but they were each conscious of the extreme tension, which, like a wave of magnetic force, at once united and divided them. Nance was the first to break the spell.
“I’m surprised,” she said, “to hear you speak of love. I thought you considered all that sort of thing sentimental and idiotic.”
Philippa’s hand went up in a quick and desperate gesture, almost an imploring one.
“Miss Herrick,” she whispered in a very low and very clear tone, “you needn’t do that. You needn’t say those things. You needn’t hurt me more than is necessary.”
“Come away, Nance. Oh, please come away and leave her!” interjected Linda.