“They are enthusiasts, these girls of mine,” said the Colonel, blandly. “Lady Hartley has made them her creatures.”
“Her name reminds me that I must be moving on,” said Vansittart. “I hope you will all forgive this invasion. I was anxious to learn how you all were. It seems a long time since I was in this part of the world.”
“It is a long time,” said Eve, almost involuntarily.
Those few words rejoiced his heart. They sounded like a confession that she had missed him and regretted him, since those long friendly walks and talks in the clear cold January afternoons. He had never in all their conversation spoken to her in the words of a lover, but he had shown her that he liked her society, and it might be that she had thought him cold and cowardly when he left her without any token of warmer feeling than this casual friendship of the roads, lanes, and family tea-table. To go away, and stay away for three months, and make no sign! A cruel treatment, if, if, in those few familiar hours, he had touched her girlish heart by the magnetic power of unspoken love.
He left the Homestead happy in the thought that she was not indifferent to the fact of his existence; that he was something more to her than a casual acquaintance.
He was to see her next day; and it would be his own fault if he did not see her the day after that; and the next, and the next; until the solemn question had been asked, and the low-breathed answer had been given, and she was his for ever. All was in his own hand now. He had but to satisfy himself upon one point—her acquaintance with Sefton, what it meant, and how far it had gone—and then the rest was peace, the perfect peace of happy and confiding love.
He was unfilial enough to be glad that his mother was not at Redwold. There would be no restraining influence, no maternal arm stretched out to pluck him from his fate. He would be free to fulfil his destiny; and when the fair young bride was won, it would be easy for her to win her own way into that motherly heart. Mrs. Vansittart was not a woman to withhold her affection from her son’s wife.
Lady Hartley appeared in the portico as the cart drove up to the door.
“What a fright you have given me!” she said. “Did anything happen to the train?”
“Nothing but what usually happens to trains.”