“Oh, you know—you know I do!”
Half an hour later found them still together, sitting by the big, old-fashioned hearth which Eliot had plied with logs till the flames roared up the chimney. Robin had not yet come back; he had ridden into Ferribridge early in the afternoon, leaving word that he would probably be late in returning. Once Maria had looked into the room to ask if she should light the lamps, and the lovers had started guiltily apart, Ann replying with hastily assumed indifference that they did not require them yet. Old Maria, whose eyesight was still quite keen enough to distinguish love, even from the further side of a room lit only by the lambent firelight, retired to her own quarters, chuckling to herself. “So ‘tez the squire as was courtin’ the chiel, after all. An’ me thinkin’ all along as how ‘twas young Master Tony! Aw, well, tez more suitin’ like, for sure—him with his millions and my Miss Ann.” Maria’s ideas as to the riches with which the owner of Heronsmere was providentially endowed might be hazy, but at least she did not err on the side of underestimating them.
Meanwhile, Eliot and Ann, placidly believing that Maria was none the wiser for her brief entrance into the room—all newly-acknowledged lovers being apparently blessed with an ostrich-like quality of self-deception—continued talking together by the firelight.
“That first day I saw you,” Eliot was saying. “It was at the Kursaal. Do you remember?”
Ann laughed and blushed a little.
“I’m not likely to forget,” she said mirthfully. “You were so frightfully rude.”
“Rude? I?” He looked honestly astonished.
“Yes. Didn’t you mean to be? I was sympathising with you so nicely over losing at the tables—and you nearly bit my head off! You looked down your nose—it’s rather a nice nose, by the way!”—impertinently—“and observed loftily: ‘Pray don’t waste your sympathy’!”
Eliot laughed outright.