"What was that noise?" she panted.
"What noise?" he asked.
"I thought I heard Godfrey's whistle—there is a noise he makes sometimes".... Her face seemed paralysed with fear and dislike—involuntarily, she drew nearer to Osmond. "If he should have heard me!" she breathed, with her mouth close to his ear.
"How could he hurt you when I am with you?" cried he, passionately. "My darling, my own, you are quite safe with me!"
His arms were round her before he had realised what he was doing. It seemed his divine right to shield her—his vocation, his purpose in life to come between her and any danger, real or fancied.
A yell, quite unlike anything human—a rush of loose pebbles and white dust, a crash on the path close to the unwary couple, and a long discordant peal of laughter.
"Cotched 'em! Cotched 'em! Cotched 'em by all that's lovely! Done 'em brown, bowled 'em out clean! Oh, my dears, if you only did know what jolly asses you both look, spooning away there like one o'clock! I'm hanged if I ever saw anything like it. I wouldn't have missed it—no, not for—come, I say, let go of a feller, Mr. Allonby. Lovers are fair game, don't yer know!"
If ever any man felt enraged it was Osmond at that moment; the more, because he saw how undignified it was to be in a rage at all. Revulsion of feeling is always unpleasant, and nothing could be more complete than the revulsion from the purest of sentiment to the most contemptible of practical jokes.
Elsa cried out in a mingled anger and terror—the ludicrous side of a situation never struck her by any chance. Osmond, as he sprang up and collared the impudent young miscreant, was divided between a desire to storm and a desire to roar with laughter. The former gained the ascendency as he looked back at Elsa's white face.
"You impertinent young scamp," he said, between his teeth, "I've a great mind to give you such a punishment as you never had in your life, to make you remember this day!"