"Do you think I can't keep my temper—when it's your brother? Try me."
He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling.
They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia stopped to look.
"What a charming place! Who lives there?"
Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment.
"That is the model farm."
"Mr. Betts's farm?"
"Yes. Can you manage that stile?"
Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to Lord William.
"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me—about that story. I don't think I can prevent him."