“We’re all on the verge of a precipice. Do you think I don’t realize that? But that’s no reason why we should rush blindly up to the thing, and throw ourselves over. And it would be nothing else than that, nothing else than sheer madness, for you and I to go off together.
“Do you think your father would give us a penny? Not he! I detect in your father, Gladys, an extraordinary vein of obstinacy. You haven’t clashed up against it yet, but try and play any of these games on him, and you’ll see!
“No; one thing you may be perfectly sure of, and that is, that whatever he finds out, Dangelis will never breathe a word to your father. He’s madly in love with you, girl, I tell you; and if I’m out of the way, you’ll be able to do just what you like with him!”
It was completely dark now, and when Luke’s oration came to an end there was no sound in the barn except a low sobbing.
“Come on, child; we must be getting home, or you’ll be frightfully late. Here! give me your hand. Where are you?”
He groped about in the darkness until his sleeve brushed against her shoulder. It was trembling under her efforts to suppress her sobs.
He got hold of her wrists and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, my dear,” he repeated, “we must get out of this now. Give me one nice kiss before we go.”
She permitted herself to be caressed—passive and unresisting in his arms.
In the darkness they touched the outer edge of Mr. Clavering’s hiding-place, and the girl, swaying a little backwards under Luke’s endearments, felt the pressure of the hay-wall behind her. She did not, however, feel the impassioned touch of the choking kiss which the poor imprisoned priest desperately imprinted on a loose tress of her hair.
It was one of those pitiful and grotesque situations which seem sometimes to arise,—as our fantastic planet turns on its orbit,—for no other purpose than that of gratifying some malign vein of goblin-like irony in the system of things.