"I have never had one!" answered Innocent, in low choked accents—"And—I shall never have one!"
Lady Blythe smiled—a cold, amused smile, and passed out through the hall into the garden.
"What delightful flowers!" she exclaimed, in a sweet, singing voice, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening—"A perfect paradise! No wonder Briar Farm is so famous! It's perfectly charming! Is this the way? Thanks ever so much!" This, as Innocent opened the gate—"Let me see!—I go up the old by-road?—yes?—and the main road joins it at the summit?—No, pray don't trouble to come with me—I can find my car quite easily! Good-bye!"
And picking up her dainty skirt with one ungloved hand, on which two diamond rings shone like circlets of dew, she nodded, smiled, and went her way—Innocent standing at the gate and watching her go with a kind of numbed patience as though she saw a figure in a dream vanishing slowly with the dawn of day. In truth she could hardly grasp the full significance of what had happened—she did not feel, even remotely, the slightest attraction towards this suddenly declared "mother" of hers—she could hardly believe the story. Yet she knew it must be true,—no woman of title and position would thus acknowledge a stigma on her own life without any cause for the confession. She stood at the gate still watching, though there was nothing now to watch, save the bending trees, and the flowering wild plants that fringed each side of the old by-road. Priscilla's voice calling her in a clear, yet lowered tone, startled her at last—she slowly shut the gate and turned in answer.
"Yes, dear? What is it?"
Priscilla trotted out from under the porch, full of eager curiosity.
"Has the lady gone?"
"Yes."
"What did she want with ye, dearie?"
"Nothing very much!" and Innocent smiled—a strange, wistful smile—"Only just what you thought!—she wished to buy something from Briar Farm—and I told her it was not to be sold!"