His arm pressed hers with a movement full of affection, and he smiled into her eyes.
"We must be going back now. You will have been out long enough." So saying she turned the pony round and they retraced their road.
"Oh, how it all comes back to me!" Francis continued. "You were so full of life and spirits that day, I thought I should never get a chance to say the words which were burning on my lips—to tell you what I was longing you should know. I don't know which I love best, the Phil who was always overflowing with fun and laughter, or the sweet serious Phil of to-day."
He changed his tone instantly as he saw her face. "I was only speaking in jest, dear one," he whispered. "I, too, can say as you said just now, that I have never loved you so well as at this moment. But I have a happy memory of the old Phil as she was before I was such an anxiety to her that she almost forgot how to smile. But never mind, soon you will forget all the sadness, and I will teach you your old trick of laughter."
But Philippa did not speak. She was wrestling with the most insupportable sensation of mingled misery and revolt, and she seemed to hear words as clearly spoken as though the speaker were actually by her side—"He does not love you. It is not you he loves."
A surge of anger blotted out the sunshine and darkened the whole world, and through the darkness one lightning flash shot through the girl's sick heart. This was jealousy. Suddenly she felt she could not bear it—she could not sit there beside the man she loved and hear him talk of other days which she had never known and of his love for another woman. In a minute or two the storm passed, but it left her faint and numb, with the beautiful veil which had enveloped her dream of bliss torn to ribbons.
She fought desperately to recover her self-possession and succeeded to a certain extent, but her hands were so cold that she could hardly feel the reins, and in her ears there sounded the rushing of great waters.
Step by step the old pony trod down the steep, uneven track, and the necessity for careful driving seemed sufficient excuse for her preoccupation.
"We must come here again," said Francis thoughtfully. "It will help me to remember;" and then, as though his thoughts had gone back to the scene enacted long ago on the place they had just visited, he added half to himself, "Dear little girl, with her happy face and clouds of dark hair under a scarlet cap!"
Philippa suppressed a wild desire to scream aloud. The words were like a knife turning in her heart at the moment; but to her relief he did not speak again until they reached the house.