As the half-mocking, half-inviting words fell from his companion’s lips, Julian turned impetuously towards the pretty, piquant face; it was shaded by a bewitching garden hat.
“I never meant it so much before, on my honour,” he said impulsively; adding with a boyish suggestion of tender reproach in his voice: “I should have thought you might have known that. It’s awfully hard lines to think it’s over.”
Miss Newton had a large crimson dahlia in her hand, and she was plucking the petals slowly away and scattering them at her feet.
“Is it?” she said.
“You know it is,” he returned ardently, trying to catch a glimpse of the dark face bent over the crimson flower. “Won’t you tell me that you’re a little sorry, too? Miss Newton—Hilda——”
His vigorous young hand was just closing over the pretty little fingers that held the dahlia; the dainty little figure was yielding to him nothing loath, it seemed, when from the further end of the grass walk a third voice broke in upon their tête-à-tête, and as they started instinctively apart Mrs. Romayne, accompanied by their hostess, came sauntering towards them.
“Taking a farewell look at the quaint old walk, Julian?” she said with suave carelessness as she drew near them. “The garden is looking too beautiful this morning, isn’t it, Miss Newton? What a lovely dahlia that is you were showing Julian!”
She looked smilingly at Miss Newton as she spoke, apparently quite unconscious that the girl’s face was white—not with embarrassment, disappointment, or emotion, but with sheer angry resentment—and she moved on as she spoke, tacitly compelling Miss Newton to move on at her side, while Julian and the other lady followed, perforce together.
“We have only about ten minutes more, I’m afraid,” she said. “I was just taking a last stroll round the place with Mrs. Ponsonby. I’m afraid we shall find London rather unbearable to-night. The call of duty is always so very inconvenient!”
She was leading the way toward the house, and her little high-pitched laugh eliciting only a monosyllabic response from the girl at her side, she resumed what was practically a monologue, carried on with a suavity and ease which was perhaps over-elaborated by just a touch. Her farewells, which followed almost immediately on their arrival at the house, when a little bustle of departure ensued—in which Miss Newton took no part, that young lady having promptly disappeared—were characterised by the same manner, about which there was also a little touch of suppressed excitement. It was not until she and Julian were alone together in a first-class carriage of the London express that her gay words and laughs ceased, and she let herself sink back in her corner, unfolding a newspaper with a short, hardly audible sigh of relief.