“You delight me by saying so,” was the quick answer, heard by no one but Betty herself, for somehow or other by this time she found that he and she had drifted a little apart from the others.
“If only I were Eira,” thought Betty, “what a good opportunity I could make of this for finding out a little more! but I get so shy and silly immediately,” and when she spoke again it was with a little effort.
“It is very pretty about here in the summer,” she said. “Up at Craig-Morion—I mean down here the seasons don’t make so much difference in the look of things. I’m glad,” she continued, “that we don’t live nearer the sea; it frightens me.”
“You have never been a voyage, I suppose?” said her companion. “You would soon get used to it, I dare say. Now-a-days, with the splendid boats there are, many people go backwards and forwards from India for the mere pleasure of the thing, you know.”
“Thank you,” said Betty, laughingly. “I’ve no ambition of the kind! Dull as it is here, I should rather stay safe on dry land. Frances longs to travel, and I wish she had more chance of it! She is so clever, you know, she would find—”
“But you yourself,” persisted Horace, “you don’t intend surely to spend all your life in this little nest of a place? The Eyrie, as Madeleine calls it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Betty. “If I must, I must! Don’t make me discontented. I am afraid I am rather so already,” with a touch of penitence.
“And why shouldn’t you be?” he responded eagerly. “Think how young you are, and how—” here he checked himself—“how much there is to see in the world,” he added, rather lamely.
“But, you see,” said Betty, “I should scarcely be fit for it!—for making my way in society, or anything of that kind. I get frightened and stupid about nothing at all.”
She felt that he was looking at her with kindly sympathy, and, impressionable as she was, it encouraged her. Almost before she knew what she was about, she found herself giving him her innocent confidences to an extent which she had rarely, if ever, done to any one, certainly not to any man. And the way home seemed marvellously short that winter afternoon.