"Why, Gerald?" she says a little nervously—they have long ago abandoned any more formal mode of address, though between them there stands ever the spectre of poor John Dampier, as present to one of the two, and he the man, as if the menacing shadow were in very truth a tangible presence. "Why, Gerald, where does this lead? Have you ever been here before?"
And for the first time since they met the night before, the young man smiles. "I thought I'd like to see an English sunrise, Nancy, so I've been up a long time. I found a rose garden through here, and I thought it would be a quiet place for our talk."
It is strangely dark and still under the dense evergreen arch of the slanting way carved through the yew hedge; Nancy can only grope her way along. Turning round, Gerald holds out his strong hands, and taking hers in what seems so cool, so impersonal a grasp, he draws her after him. And Nancy flushes in the half darkness; it is the first time that she and Gerald Burton have ever been alone together as they are alone now, and that though they have met so very, very often in the last two years.
Nancy is at once glad and sorry when he suddenly loosens his grasp of her hands. The shadowed way terminates in a narrow wrought-iron gate; and beyond the gate is the rose garden of Barwell Moat, a tangle of exquisite colouring, jealously guarded and hidden away from those to whom the more familiar beauties of the place are free.
It is one of the oldest of English roseries, planned by some Elizabethan dame who loved solitude rather than the sun. And if the roses bloom a little less freely in this quiet, still enclosure than they would do in greater light and wilder air, this gives the rosery, in these hot June days, a touch of austere and more fragile beauty than that to be seen beyond its enlacing yews.
A hundred years after the Elizabethan lady had designed the rosery of Barwell Moat a Jacobean dame had added to her rose garden a fountain—one brought maybe from Italy or France, for the fat stone Cupids now shaking slender jets of water from their rose-leaved cornucopias are full of a roguish, Southern grace.
When they have passed through into this fragrant, enchanted looking retreat, Nancy cries out in real delight: "What an exquisite and lovely place! How strange that Daisy and I never found it!"
And then, as Gerald remains silent, she looks, for the first time this morning, straight up into his face, and her heart is filled with a sudden overwhelming sensation of suspense—and yes, fear, for there is the strangest expression on the young man's countenance, indeed it is full of deep, of violent emotion—emotion his companion finds contagious.
She tells herself that at last he has brought news. That if he did not tell her so last night it was because he wished her to have one more night of peace—of late poor Nancy's nights have become very peaceful.
John Dampier? There was a time—it now seems long, long ago—when Nancy would have given not only her life but her very soul to have known that her husband was safe, that he would come back to her. But now? Alas! Alas! Now she realises with an agonised feeling of horror, of self-loathing, that she no longer wishes to hear Gerald Burton say that he has kept his word—that he has found Dampier.