Traversing the corridor, she descended the stairs and passed straight to the hall door. Once in the open, she wheeled to the right with a steady deliberate movement and began slowly to retrace the steps she had taken nearly half an hour earlier.
Steadily and unemotionally she went forward, skirting the courtyard, until, at the dip of the path, the glen came into view, and with it Milbanke's precise, black figure, standing exactly as she had seen it last.
The fact caused her no surprise. That he should still be there seemed the natural—the anticipated thing; and without any pause—any moment of hesitation or delay—she moved directly towards him.
As she reached his side, her cheeks were hot, her heart was still beating unevenly; and, absorbed by her own emotion, she failed to see the dejected droop of his shoulders, the slight, pathetic suggestion of age in his bent back.
Her footsteps were scarcely audible on the damp earth, and she was close beside him before he became conscious of her presence; as he did so, however, he started violently, and the blood rushed incontinently over his forehead and cheeks.
"Clodagh!" he stammered.
But Clodagh checked him, laying her hand quickly on his arm.
"Mr. Milbanke," she said hurriedly, "will you forgive me for what I said? I want to take it back. I want to say that, if you still like, I—I will marry you."
CHAPTER VII
And thus it came about that Clodagh Asshlin entered upon a new phase of that precarious condition that we call life. The impulse that had induced her to accept Milbanke's proposal was in no way complex. The knowledge had suddenly been conveyed to her that, through no act of her own, she had been placed under a deep obligation; and her primary—her inherited—instinct had been to pay her debt as speedily and as fully as lay within her power, ignoring, in her lack of worldly wisdom, the fact that such a bargain must of necessity possess obligations other than personal, which would demand subsequent settlement.