It would have been noticeable to any observer that in the caresses they exchanged, Luke played the perfunctory, and she the passionate part. She kissed him thirstily, insatiably, with clinging lips that seemed avid of his very soul. When at last they moved on through grass that was still wet with the rain of the night before, Luke drew his hand away from hers, as if to emphasize the seriousness of his words.
“I am terribly anxious, dearest, about James,” he said. “We had an absurd quarrel this morning, and he rushed off to Hullaway in a rage. I found him in the inn. He had been drinking, but it was not that which upset him. He had not taken enough to affect him in that way. I am very, very anxious about him. I forget whether I’ve ever told you about my mother? Her mind—poor darling—was horribly upset before she died. She suffered from more than one distressing mania. And my fear is that James may go the same way.”
Gladys hung her head. In a strange and subtle way she felt as though the responsibility of this new catastrophe rested upon her. Her desperate passion for Luke had so unnerved her, that she had become liable to be victimized by any sort of superstitious apprehension.
“How dreadful!” she whispered, “but he seemed to me perfectly natural just now.”
“That was Lacrima’s doing,” said Luke. “Lacrima is at the bottom of it all. I wish, oh, I wish, she was going to marry James, instead of that uncle of yours.”
“Father would never allow that,” said Gladys, raising her head. “He is set upon making her take uncle John. It has become a kind of passion with him. Father is funny in these things.”
“Still—it might be managed,” muttered Luke thoughtfully, “if we carried it through with a high hand. We might arrange it; the world is malleable, after all. If you and I, my dear, put our heads together, Mr. John Goring might whistle for his bride.”
“I hate Lacrima!” cried Gladys, with a sudden access of her normal spirit.
“I don’t care two pence about Lacrima,” returned Luke. “It is of James I am thinking.”