“I led her forwards a few paces out of sight of the ravine, the mere thought of which now turned me sick, and brought her to a plot of soft turf, beneath a tree with low spreading branches. The trance was evidently passing away; her limbs no longer had that unnatural rigidity; her eyelids drooped heavily, and her jaw relaxed. A violent trembling seized upon her; she sank down on the turf as if all power of self-support had gone out of her. At that moment I fancied I heard a slight crackle among the shrubbery not far off; I looked quickly up, and saw—or thought I saw—a short ungainly figure obscurely stealing away through the underbush. Almost immediately he vanished amidst the trees, leaving me in doubt whether my eyesight had not after all played me false.
“As I turned again to Kate, she was sitting up against the trunk of the tree, the diamonds flashing at her throat and ears, and a puzzled questioning expression on her face.
“‘What makes you look so strange?’ she murmured. ‘Where is your hat! How did we come here, Tom? I thought——’
“She stopped abruptly, and rose slowly to her feet. Her eyes were cast down shamefacedly, and she bit her lip. She lifted her hand to her throat, and felt the diamonds there. Then, with an apprehensive, almost a cowering glance, she peered stealthily round through the trees, as though expecting to see something that she dreaded. Finally she turned again, appealingly, to me, but said nothing.
“I thought I partly understood the significance of this dumb-show. She was subject to these somnambulistic trances, and was ashamed of them. She knew not, on this occasion, what extravagance she might have committed in the presence of me, her lover. She feared the construction I might put upon it, yet was too timid—or, it might be, too proud—to speak. But her misgiving did me injustice. Shocked and grieved though I was, I loved her more than ever.
“‘You were faint, my dear, that’s all,’ I said, cheerfully and affectionately. ‘I brought you under this tree, and now you’re all right.’
“She shook her head, with a piteous smile. ‘I know what has been the matter with me, Mr. Gainsborough,’ she said, with an attempt at reserve and coldness in her tone. ‘I had hoped I might have parted from you before you knew, but—it was not to be so! It is very good of you to pretend to ignore it, and I thank you—I thank you. Here,’ she added, nervously unclasping the necklace and removing the earrings, ‘I have worn these too long. Take them, please.’
“‘Kate, you shall wear them forever!’ cried I, passionately.
“‘I must not begin yet, at all events,’ she returned more firmly. ‘Take them, please, or you will make me feel more humiliated than I do now.’ She put them in my unwilling hands. ‘And now we’ll get our hats and go back to the hotel,’ she continued, with a smile which was pathetic in its effort to seem indifferent and unconstrained. ‘Where are they? Ah!’