"I had hoped," said John, quietly, "that you might be thinking a little of my happiness too."
"Oh, John! But your happiness and mine seemed all the same thing," she said ingenuously. "Yet he thinks of my life as finished; and I was thinking of it as though it were beginning all over again. He made me feel so ashamed, so conscience-stricken." She hid her face in her hands. "How could I tell him?"
"I think," said John, "that the time has come when he must be told. I meant to put it off until he attained his majority; but since he has broached the subject of your leaving this house himself, he has given us the best opportunity possible. And I also think—that the telling had better be left to me."
CHAPTER XVIII
John Crewys stood on the walk below the terrace, with Peter by his side, enjoying an after-breakfast smoke, and watching a party of sportsmen climbing up the bracken-clothed slopes of the opposite hillside. A dozen beaters were toiling after the guns, among whom the short and sturdy figure of Colonel Hewel was very plainly to be distinguished. A boy was leading a pony-cart for the game.
Sarah had accepted an invitation to dine and spend the evening with her beloved Lady Mary at Barracombe; but Peter had another appointment with her besides, of which Lady Mary knew nothing. He was to meet her at the ferry, and picnic on the moor at the top of the hill, on his side of the river. But through all the secret joy and triumph that possessed him at the remembrance of this rendezvous, he could not but sigh as he watched the little procession of sportsmen opposite, and almost involuntarily his regret escaped him in the half-muttered words—
"I shall never shoot again."
"There are things even better worth doing in life," said John, sympathetically.
"Colonel Hewel wouldn't give in to that," said Peter.
"He's rather a one-idea'd man," John agreed. "But if you asked him whether he'd sacrifice all the sport he's ever likely to enjoy, for one chance to distinguish himself in action—why, you're a soldier, and you know best what he'd say."