"Do you think so? Oh! I am afraid a great many moments—even minutes. Look! Mrs. Stormont is beginning to be uneasy—she is looking for Philip. Oh! come before she sees——"
They hurried downstairs, Lilias leading the young man after her, with a guiding hand upon his arm. The great hall door was standing open, the freshness of the summer night coming in, close to the house a dark belt of shadow, and beyond the shadow, and beyond the shrubberies and garden paths clear in the moonlight. It could only have been by instinct that Lilias penetrated round the corner to the lonely spot in the darkness where the two lovers had betaken themselves, and where Katie, after her hysterical outburst, had become calm again and recovered command of herself. The darkness, and the moonlight, and the soft noises and breathings of the night, and the neighbourhood of the other pair, mounted into the head of Lewis. He scarcely knew what he was doing. He said in a whisper, "Do not interrupt them. Wait here a little," not knowing what he said.
Lilias did not object, or say a word. She took the rôle of sentinel quite calmly, while he stood by her, throbbing with a thousand motives and temptations. His own conscious being seemed arrested, his reason and intelligence; bold words came into his mind which he wanted to whisper to her—he bent towards her, in spite of himself approaching her ear. How was it that he said nothing? He could not tell. His heart beat so fast that it took away his breath. Had he not been so entirely transported out of himself he must have spoken, he must have betrayed himself. He felt afterwards, with a shudder, as if he had been on the edge of a bottomless pit, and had been kept on firm standing-ground not by any wisdom of his, but by the rapture of feeling which possessed him. He had kissed her hand in her own house without any hesitation or sense of timidity, but he did not do it now. He did not even touch with his own the hand that lay on his arm. He was in a sort of agony, yet ecstasy. "Wait a little, wait a little," was all he said. And Lilias took no fright from the words. She did not know how near she was to some confession, some appeal, that would have startled her at once out of her usual freshness and serenity. They stood close together, like two different worlds, the one all passion and longing, the other all innocent composure and calm. But by degrees Lilias became impatient of waiting.
"You are kinder than I am," she whispered, "Mr. Murray. It is a little cold, and Mrs. Stormont will be looking everywhere for Philip. We must not stand any longer, we must try to find them. Do you see nothing?"
"Nothing," said Lewis, with a gasp of self-restraint. His face seemed nearer to her than she expected, and perhaps this startled Lilias. She gave a sudden low cry through the stillness.
"Katie! are you there? Katie! are you there?"
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
Mrs. Stormont felt that all was going well. Philip had not shown any great degree of gaiety, but he had done his duty like a man. The countess, after that duty-quadrille, had come and sat down beside her, and praised her son in words ever pleasant to a mother's ear.
"He did not pretend to like it," she said; "but he did his duty nobly. Now I hope he will enjoy himself: I have no objection to stand up with such a nice young fellow, but I think, dear Mrs. Stormont, that in the country we might dispense with these formal quadrilles that all the young people hate."