A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great effort to master her excitement.
"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask him for his version, too."
Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed.
"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing man: "Ah, I see!—here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to mother—and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with you—my small sister!—when we next meet."
He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered—as of a grave yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury.
As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the grass beside her.
"What a heavenly spot!—and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch."
Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, dappling his bronzed face.
Marcia flushed a little—an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible. Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it should be a word of denial. Better—better infinitely—these doubts and checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her.