“Oh, I long for him to see me!” cried the girl. “I can just imagine his face, I can just imagine it!”
The artist frowned. “This is not a joke, Gladys. Mind you, if I do let Clavering into our secret, it’ll be only on condition that you promise not to flirt with him. I shall want you to stay very still,—just as I put you.”
Dangelis had never indicated before quite so plainly his blunt and unvarnished view of her relations with her spiritual adviser, and he now looked rather nervously at her to see how she received this intimation.
“I love teasing Mr. Clavering!” she cried savagely, “I should like to tease him so much, that he never, never, would forget it!”
This extreme expression of feeling was a surprise, and by no means a pleasant one, to Ralph Dangelis.
“Why do you want so much to upset our friend?” he enquired.
“I suppose,” she answered, still instinctively playing up to his idea of her naiveté and childishness, “it is because he thinks himself so good and so perfectly safe from falling in love with anyone—and that annoys me.”
“Ha!” chuckled Dangelis, “so that’s it, is it?” and he paced in thoughtful silence by her side until they reached the house.
The morning that followed this conversation was as warm as the preceding ones, but a strong southern wind had risen, with a remote touch of the sea in its gusty violence. The trees in the park, as the artist and his girl-friend watched them from the terrace, while Mr. Romer, who had now returned from town worked in his study, and Lacrima helped Mrs. Romer to “do the flowers,” swayed and rustled ominously in the eddying gusts.
Clouds of dust kept blowing across the gates from the surface of the drive and the delphiniums bent low on their long stalks. The wind was of that peculiar character which, though hot and full of balmy scents, conveys a feeling of uneasiness and troubled expectation. It suggested thunder and with and beyond that, something threatening, calamitous and fatal.