Then, when more than ten minutes have elapsed, Lord Delaval’s voice rouses her into consciousness of her whereabouts and her supreme folly.
“Well!” he says, “do you think we have had enough of this garden? The dew is falling fast, and I am unsentimental enough to be liable to rheumatism.”
Zai stops short and faces him.
“I beg your pardon, Lord Delaval. I—I really forgot you were with me. Let us go back at once, of course.”
She has braced up her courage to meet the grand ordeal—the ordeal which she believes will lay her young life in ashes.
It is to look Carl Conway in the face, like Tennyson’s Lady Clara Vere de Vere, to slay her unfaithful lover with a glance.
Thinking of this, she hurries on, oblivious again of Lord Delaval’s proximity, until they reach the house.
Just as they are on the point of entering, a hand pushes back the lace curtains of the long French casement that gives out on this portion of the lawn, and lies diagonally, as it were, with the path leading up to the entrance, and without any reason the two pause side by side a moment. Two figures—a man and a woman, stand well relieved against the background of brilliant light. The woman is very tall and slender, and clad in amber flowing drapery, with a blood red pomegranate flower burning vividly against her massive coronet of black hair. The man is also tall, and wears a fair, boyish appearance.
The two voices float out distinctly enough on the stillness outside.
“It is growing very late, and Delaval and your sister, or Beatrice and Benedick, as you call them, have not put in an appearance yet,” Sir Everard Aylmer remarks presently, glancing at a tiny enamelled watch he wears.