She paused, hesitated. Peter saw her face. His heart jumped, and then started off klip-klopping at a terrible rate.
“I—” she began. A blinding flash of lightning, followed by a terrific peal right overhead, stopped the words.
“Come at once!” said Peter imperatively, sharply almost. “It’s not safe.”
She ran up the path, he following. In the shelter of the cottage she turned and faced him. The colour in her face was not, perhaps, quite to be accounted for by the rain and her own haste.
“You’re drenched,” said Peter abruptly. “You can’t stay in those wet things a moment longer than absolutely necessary. With your permission, [Pg 175]I shall go to your house and order your carriage to be sent immediately. But first—” He had put her a chair by the fireplace; he was on his knees applying a match to the pile of sticks and fir-cones already laid therein.
“But,” protested Lady Anne, “I cannot give my permission. You will yourself be soaked—drenched—if you venture out in this downpour.”
Peter laughed lightly. “It will not be the first time, nor, I dare to say, the last. Rain has but little effect on me.” He rose from his knees. The flames were twining and twisting from stick to stick in long tongues of orange and yellow and blue. There was a merry crackling, there were flying sparks.
Peter crossed to the cupboard. From it he brought a black bottle and a wineglass.
“I have, alas! no brandy to offer you, but port wine will, I hope, prove as efficacious against a chill.” Without paying the smallest heed to her protestations he poured her out a glass, which he held towards her. “Drink it,” he said, in somewhat the tone one orders a refractory child to take a glass of medicine.
Anne took the glass, meekly, obediently, with [Pg 176]the faintest gurgle of laughter. “To your health!” she said as she sipped the wine.