Sylvia knitted her pretty brows.
“I don’t know what we shall do about Mr. Bulstrode and the tea table. You and Lewis and I are just company enough, but Mr. Bulstrode will not fit in at all.�
Sylvia was quite clever enough to see that Skelton did not intend to have Lewis left out of any scheme of happiness in which he was concerned, and therefore wisely included him.
“I think,� said Skelton, “we will have to leave Bulstrode out of that little idyl. Bulstrode likes—reveres you, as he does all good and charming women, but he is undoubtedly afraid of women. He will probably take up his quarters in the wing, and only prowl about the library. But you and I and Lewis will be very happy. The boy loves you, and, Sylvia,� continued Skelton, with his sweetest eloquence of voice and look, “you have no conception of how he longs for affection. He is very proud and sensitive, and—poor little soul!—he has no friends but you and me and Bulstrode, I think.�
“I mean to be his friend,� said Sylvia in a low voice.
“And I, too, felt that longing for affection until—until—� Skelton finished the sentence by kissing Sylvia’s fair red mouth.
After a while Skelton told her delicately about the interview with Blair, except that voluntary doubling of what he had first given him. Sylvia listened, and thought Skelton certainly the most magnanimous man on earth. She quite forgot that Blair had a score against Skelton, and a long one, too.
The late afternoon grew dark; the white clouds became a copper red, the dark line at the horizon rose angrily and covered the heavens. The air turned chilly, and the wind came up wildly from the bay. One of the northwest storms peculiar to the season and the latitude was brewing fast. But Skelton and Sylvia were quite oblivious of it—strangely so for Skelton, who was rarely forgetful or unobservant of what went on around him. But that whole day had been an epoch with him. When had he a whole day of complete happiness in his life? How many days can any mortal point to when one has become happy, has become generous, has become beloved? Yet, such had been this day with Skelton. Sylvia, who had been dear to him before, became dearer. Something in the time, the spot, the aloneness, waked a deeper passion in him than he had felt before. He forgot for the first time how the hours were flying. He could not have told, to save his life, how long he had sat in that half darkness, with Sylvia’s soft head upon his breast, her hand trembling in his. A sweet intoxication, different from anything he had ever felt before, possessed him. Suddenly the wind, which had soughed mournfully among the trees, rose to a shriek. It flung a rose branch full in Sylvia’s face, and a dash of cold rain came with it. Skelton started, rudely awakened from his dream. It was dark within the arbour and dark outside. What light still lingered in the sullen sky was a pale and ghastly glare. The river looked black, and, as the wind came screaming in from the ocean, it dashed the water high over the sandy banks. A greater change could not be imagined than from the soft beauty of the afternoon.
Skelton and Sylvia both rose at the same moment. The rain had turned to hail; the storm that had been gathering all the afternoon at last burst upon them. In half a moment Sylvia’s white dress was drenched. As they stood at the entrance to the arbour, Skelton, with his arm around her, about to make a dash for the house, turned and glanced over his shoulder towards the river, and there, in the black and angry water, storm-tossed and lashed by the wind, a boat was floating bottom upwards. There had evidently not been time to take the sail down, and every minute it would disappear under the seething waves and then come up again—and clinging to the bottom of the boat was a drenched boyish figure that both Skelton and Sylvia recognised in a moment. It was Lewis Pryor. His hat was gone, and his jacket too; he was holding on desperately to the bottom of the boat, and the hurricane was driving the cockleshell down the river at a furious rate.
Skelton uttered an exclamation like a groan and pointed to the boat.