“Another five minutes,” announced Burke, “and we should have begun without you. Not even Lady Anne could have kept us under restraint a moment longer.”
The party was quite a large one, augmented by a good many friends from round about the neighbourhood, and amid the riotous fun and ridiculous mishaps which almost invariably accompany an alfresco meal, Jean contrived to throw off the feeling of oppression generated by Keturah’s prophecy.
Burke, having heaped her plate with lobster mayonnaise, established himself beside her, and proceeded to catechise her about her recent experience.
“Did the lady—what’s her name, Keturah?—tell you when you were going to marry me?” he demanded in an undertone, his dare-devil eyes laughing down at her impudently.
“No, she did not. She only foresees things that are really going to happen,” retorted Jean.
“Well, that is”—composedly. “She can’t be much good at her job if she missed seeing it.”
“Well,” Jean affected to consider—“the nearest she got to it was that she saw ‘darkness coming... black darkness.’”
Under cover of the general preoccupation in lunch and conversation, Burke’s hand closed suddenly over hers.
“You little devil!” he said, half amused, half sulky. “I’ll make you pay for that.”
But out here, in the wind-swept, open spaces of the Moor, Jean felt no fear of him.