Bending down to her, he spoke with a soothing whisper. “Tell me what it was that terrified you.”
She would not answer. She only pressed his arm with a tighter pressure, lest he might break from her again in pursuit; she hurried onwards with a quicker step. Skirting round the trees, which before the house made a half circle, Charlotte came to the end, and then darted rapidly across the lawn to the terrace and into the house by one of the windows. He followed her.
Her first movement was to close the shutters and bar them: her next to sit down on the nearest chair. Ill as she looked, George could scarcely forbear a smile at her gauze dress: the bottom of its skirt was in shreds.
“Will you let me get you something, Charlotte? Or ring for it?”
“I don’t want anything,” she answered. “I shall be all right directly. How could you frighten me so?”
“I frighten you!” returned George. “It was not I who frightened you.”
“Indeed it was. You and no one else. Did you not hear me scream?”
“I did.”
“It was at you, rustling through the trees,” persisted Charlotte. “I had gone out to see if the air would relieve this horrid headache, which has been upon me since last night and won’t go away. I strolled into the thicket, thinking all sorts of lonely things, never suspecting that you or any one else could be near me. I wonder I did not faint, as well as scream.”
“Charlotte, what nonsense! You were whispering angrily with some one; some one who escaped in the opposite direction. Who was it?”