“I haven’t the least intention of giving it up,” he said in a hard voice. “It’s the chief pleasure in life to me. Trailing around Lorne and harrying his tenants happen to be Uncle Philip’s pet enjoyments. I don’t ask him to give those up. And I reserve the right to amuse myself in my own way.”
He switched the conversation on to another subject, and, after a decent interval, excused himself on the plea that he must “unpack his traps.”
Ann watched him stalking back to the house with gravely wistful eyes. Neither by word nor look had he implied the slightest recollection of the occasion when he had asked her to be his wife nor of her answer, and she realised that with the ingrained pride of his race he chose to consider the incident as closed. “Then that’s finished,” he had said at the time. “I shan’t ask you again.” And he had meant every word of it. With a headstrong determination he had accepted his dismissal and henceforward regarded himself as free to make ducks and drakes of his life if it so pleased him. She shrank from the knowledge. It seemed to lay a heavy sense of responsibility upon her.
Yet she could not find it in her heart to regret her decision. She felt deeply thankful that the mothering, protective impulse which had almost led her into promising to marry Tony had been stayed by Lady Susan’s wise words. This hot-headed, undisciplined boy, despite his lovableness and charm, was not the type of man who would make a woman of Ann’s fine fibre happy as his wife. Perhaps, unconsciously to herself, she was mentally contrasting him with some one else—with a man who, stern, and embittered though he might be, yet gave her a curious feeling of reliance, a sense of secret reserves of strength that would never fail whatever demand life might make upon them.
It seemed to her as if she and Eliot had drawn nearer to each other during their talk together on the deserted railway platform—as though some intangible barrier between them had been broken down. She could not put into actual words the thought which flitted fugitively through her mind—it was too vague and indeterminate. Only she was subconsciously aware that some change had taken place—that their relation to each other was curiously altered.
As she lay in bed that night, her mind a confused jumble of the day’s happenings, one thought rose clear above the medley—the memory of his last words to her:
“You need never imagine you’re not wanted at the Cottage. I like to think of you there.”