“Yes,” she said, with a little smile—a smile that somehow, however, failed to lighten up her face as of old—a poor, pitiful, unsatisfactory attempt at a smile only. “Yes, it is certainly I. Are you very much astonished to see me? Where have you sprung from?”
“I have been fishing down the Nun,” he replied. “Are you staying here? Is Captain Chancellor here?”
“Yes and no,” she answered, with a very forced attempt at playfulness. “I am staying here, but alone.”
“Alone!” he exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, alone,” she repeated. “Why do you cross-question me so, Gerald? Why do you look at me so? I am not a baby. You are as bad as Frank. I wish I hadn’t met you. I didn’t want you to speak to me. I don’t want any one to speak to me. I have no friends, and I don’t want any.”
Then suddenly, to his utter amazement, she finished up this petulant, incoherent speech by bursting into tears. They were the first she had shed since she left Halswood; and once released from the unnatural restraint in which they had been pent up, they took revenge on it by the violence with which they poured forth. The position was by no means a pleasant one for Mr Thurston, though he did not share Captain Chancellor’s exaggerated horror of tears, or believe with him that they were invariably the precursors of hysterics. “Something must be wrong, very wrong, I fear,” he thought, and his unselfish anxiety and genuine pity for the suffering woman by his side quickened his instincts on her behalf. For a minute or two he walked on beside her in silence. Then, as they were approaching the more frequented part of the gardens, and her sobs gave no sign of subsiding, he spoke to her—quietly and kindly, but with a slight inference of authority in his tone, which, excited as she was, she instinctively obeyed.
“Suppose we turn and walk back again a little way,” he said. “You have over-tired yourself, I am afraid.”
She did not speak at once, but turned as he directed. He could see now that she was making strong efforts to control herself. When she thought that she could trust her voice, she spoke.
“I am ashamed of myself, Gerald, utterly ashamed of myself,” she said at last. “What must you think of me? I suppose I have over-tired myself. I have been walking about here nearly all day. I had nothing else to do.”
“And you are really alone here?” he inquired.