‘Did I?’ said Richard. ‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Is that what you really think of me?’ pursued she, her eyes full of wrathful fire, though the tears were still standing on her cheeks. ‘Answer me—I insist on your answering me!’
Richard’s gaze had been fixed on the little print which she was holding, and Rosalie, marking this, had felt an increase of indignation. Did he dare to share the opinion which the artist had so impertinently pronounced? Rousing himself, however, he turned towards her, and their eyes met.
‘I do think,’ he said, ‘that you know very little of life. Perhaps it is all the better for you. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is nearly always bitter—and sometimes it is poisonous.’
Rosalie was about to make a very angry rejoinder when the sound of steps close to them made them both suddenly start; on looking round they beheld a loving couple, such as are so frequently to be met with in rural districts on Sunday afternoons, sauntering down the lane.
Rosalie hastily restored her handkerchief to her pocket, and again leaned over the gate, endeavouring to assume a careless attitude; but she was secretly much annoyed, for the young man who was so gallantly escorting a much befringed and beribboned lady was no other than Sam Belbin. At any other time she would have been somewhat amused on discovering how soon her lowly admirer had consoled himself. He was working at Branston now, and his companion was evidently a townswoman; but that he should come on her just then, in the midst of her tears and wrath, with Richard Marshall in such close proximity, was most vexatious.
Sam stared hard as he approached, taking in, as Rosalie felt though she did not again look towards him, every compromising detail of the situation. When they had passed on he made some facetious remark to the girl on whose arm he was hanging, to which she responded by loud laughter.
The little incident impressed Rosalie disagreeably: she turned to Richard petulantly, holding out the little print which had been the cause of so much agitation.
‘You had better finish burning this,’ she said.
‘Perhaps I had,’ returned he, with unexpected docility.