Anna rushed up the hill. Her passionate words were but a poor vent for her surging resentment. She was choked. She longed to throw herself down in the bent and cry out her grief and disdain. She had not imagined anything so weak, so baffling. She could not wonder at Elias's scorn. It struck her as possible that if Mr. Severn knew all he might some day spurn her; revulsion of feeling might impel him to it.
At the top of the hill she paused. The dog-cart was a dozen paces farther on. Borlase had not heard her, and was looking the other way. He sat with drooping rein, and one arm thrown over the back of the seat. His face was in profile, but she could see its expression of deep, calm thought. It impressed her with the possibility of controlling this white heat of angry disgust. Only pride had enabled her to steady her voice before Clothilde. Tears had forced themselves into her eyes, but Mrs. Severn, being a cursory observer, had attributed the scintillation to passion. This reaction was more full of shame than the disclosure in Wonston streets had been. The new impression of Clothilde became the mastering one; to a less earnest and honest nature it might have been fleeting as a phantom. Could she hope ever to lose its bitterness?
But as she looked at Borlase her temper cooled.
His unconsciousness of her presence, though he was waiting for her, added force to his curb on her own impetuosity of which she had been conscious before now.
But there was an interest beyond that of character in the abstraction of his air. Of what was he thinking, of whom? The wonder of whom another is thinking is the germ of the wish and the hope that the thought may be of one's self. A twinge of jealous fear follows it. At this moment she grasped the realisation of a kindness that had been at pains to show solicitude, to be individual. His words and looks and hand pressure poured in warm remembrance into her heart. He had helped her, he would have helped her more. She knew of what joy they were on the verge.
Yet she hesitated. She felt unnerved. Must she go on in spite of her tear-washed eyes, which he would instantly perceive, or return unseen and send Scilla with a message? True, she had promised to go herself. She wanted to speak to him too, to thank him, to explain. But it seemed all at once as though it would be much easier to send Scilla. Her very shyness was surrender, but this she did not know.
And while she hesitated, he suddenly turned and their eyes met.
