“No,” said Mr Cheviott. “I cannot shake hands on such terms. I run no risk of hurting your feelings by saying so; you, I know, do not attach much consequence to so empty a ceremony, but unfortunately I do. Goodbye, Miss Western.”
He raised his hat and turned away.
When he was fairly out of sight, Mary sat down on the short grass that bordered the wood-path, leaned her head against the stump of an old tree standing close by and burst into tears. Then she took her flowers, the pretty, winsome things she had plucked so carefully, gathered them all into one heap, and, rising from her seat, moved by some sudden instinct of remorse, threw them—threw them, with all the strength of her vigorous young arms, away, back among the underwood and grassy tangle where they had grown.
“Primroses and violets,” she said as she did so, “I shall never be able to endure the sight of you again.”
Chapter Twenty Four.
Et Tu, Brute!
”... How strange the tangle is!
What old perplexity is this?”
Songs of Two Worlds.
And Alys did not get her flowers, poor girl. Nor was she told the reason why. But late that last evening, when the packing was done, and the various little personalities that, even in an enforced sojourn of the kind, are sure to collect about people, above all about people of individuality and refinement, were all collected together and put away, and the farm-house rooms had resumed their ordinary consistent bareness, Mary sat down by Alys’s bed and put her arms round the girl’s neck and kissed her with a clinging tenderness that brought the tears to Alys’s eyes.