Rex felt relieved. He thought he had got at it all now.
“Don’t take it to heart so,” he said, encouragingly. “It was a very natural thing to do. You know I asked you to trust me. It is only—people gossip so. But I’ll tell you what, we will walk up and down in this wood for a little, while you tell me all your troubles, and I—if I have time—will tell you some of mine: then I will hurry on, and you can finish your walk and come home at leisure. Not even Miss Mabella Forsyth can make mischief out of that.” He laughed a little as he spoke.
Neither he nor Imogen heard a faint rustle a few yards off, on one side where the brushwood was thick, and where there still stood the ruins of a summer-house or hut, which the Helmont boys had constructed years and years ago. But there was no response to his laughing tone, and glancing down he saw that the girl’s very lips were pale. He grew frightened again; what could be the matter? That it had anything to do with Robin’s warnings—which, after all, had not impressed him deeply—never occurred to him.
“My dear child—Imogen!” he said, impulsively, “what has happened? What is the matter? Do tell me, whatever it is,” and he tried to take her hand, but she tore it away.
“What do you mean?” she exclaimed half wildly. “If there is anything the matter, you must know it. Why have you made me think—made everybody, almost, think Oh, I don’t know what I am saying, and I don’t know what to do. You said the evening before you went away that you had something to say to me, and then you wrote. What was it, then, that you were going to say to me?”
“I wanted to warn you again, more definitely, about being on your guard in some ways, and I was sorry to see you and Beatrix Helmont so much together,” Major Winchester replied very quietly. He was growing very nervous himself; terrible misgivings that Robin’s discernment had not been at fault began to make themselves heard. He felt that everything depended on his own perfect self-possession and presence of mind, if this girl, so strangely thrown on his mercy, was to be saved, spared from what might cast a miserable shadow of mortification and loss of self-respect over the rest of her young life. So he allowed himself to show no pity; no impulse of sympathy must tempt him to go a hair’s-breadth beyond what he felt intuitively was the safe limit.
“I must try to be matter-of-fact and commonplace,” his instinct told him, “so that afterwards, when she thinks over it coolly, she will be able to believe I had imagined nothing else.”
“I am afraid you have had annoyances and difficulties I would have saved you from if I could. But don’t tell me anything you would rather not,” he went on, hesitating a little, half because he really did not know what to say, half to give her time.
But Imogen scarcely heard his words. It was growing too much for her; every sense seemed absorbed by an overmastering irritation and impatience.
“Are you purposely trying to mislead me? Are you making fun of me? Or,” as a new idea, like a flash of lurid lightning, crossed her mind, “has some one else been doing so? Yet—you spoke of a note? You sent me a note? See here—this is it—that is your writing, is it not?”