Despard had been roused by the talk with him. He got up now and went slowly round to the back of the house—it was a place he had known in old days—thus avoiding all risk of coming across any of the guests. By a path behind the stables he made his way slowly into the woods, and in about half an hour’s time he found himself where these ended at the high road, along which his sister must pass. There was a stile near, over which, through a field, lay a footpath to the church, known thereabouts as the old church, and here on the stile Mr Norreys seated himself to await Mrs Selby.
“I’ve managed that pretty neatly,” he said, trying to imagine he was feeling as usual. “I wonder who that fellow was. He seemed to have heard Maddie’s name though he did not know her.”
He was perfectly clear in his head now, but the pain in it was racking. He tried not to think, but in vain. Clearer, and yet more clearly, stood out before his mind’s eye the strange drama of that afternoon. And the more he thought of it, the more he looked at it, approaching it from every side, the more incapable he became of explaining Miss Ford’s extraordinary conduct. The indignation which had at first blotted out almost all other feeling gradually gave way to his extreme perplexity.
“She had no sort of grounds for speaking to me as she did,” he reflected. “Accusing me vaguely of unworthy motives—what could she mean?” Then a new idea struck him. “Some one has been making mischief,” he thought: “that must be it, though what and how, I cannot conceive. Gertrude Englewood would not do it intentionally—but still—I saw that she was changed to me. I shall have it out with her. After all, I hope Madeline’s letter has gone.”
And a vague, very faint hope began to make itself felt that perhaps, after all, all was not lost. If she had been utterly misled about him—if—
He drew a deep breath, and looked round. It was the very sweetest moment of a summer’s day existence, that at which late afternoon begins softly and silently to fade into early evening. There was an almost Sabbath stillness in the air, a tender suggestion of night’s reluctant approach, and from where Despard sat the white headstones of some graves in the ancient churchyard were to be seen among the grass. The man felt strangely moved and humbled.
“If I could hope ever to win her,” he thought, “I feel as if I had it in me to be a better man—I am not all selfish and worldly, Maisie—surely not? But what has made her judge me so cruelly? It is awful to remember what she said, and to imagine what sort of an opinion she must have of me to have been able to say it. For—no, that was not my contemptible conceit—” and his face flushed. “She was beginning to care for me. She is too generous to have remembered vindictively my insolence, for insolence it was, at the first. Besides, she said herself that she had been getting to like and trust me as a friend. Till to-day—has the change in her all come from what I said to-day? No girl can despise a man for the fact of his caring for her—what can it be? Good heavens, I feel as if I should go mad!”
And he wished that the pain in his head, which had somewhat subsided, would get worse again, if only it would stop his thinking.
But just then came the sound of wheels. In another moment Mrs Selby’s pony-carriage was in sight. Despard got off his stile, and walked slowly down the road to meet her.
“So you faithless—” she began—for, to tell the truth, she had not attached much credence to the story which had reached her of the frightful headache—but she changed her tone the moment she caught sight of his face. “My poor boy, you do look ill!” she exclaimed. “I am so sorry. I would have come away at once if I had known.”