“Yes, Aunt Sophy,” said Rosalind, faintly. She saw what was coming, and it frightened, yet excited her. “There is plenty of time. It will do in—half an hour.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Lennox, with an absurd insistence, as if she meant something, “you had better go at once.”
“I am nervous, as Sophy has discovered, and can’t keep still,” said Rivers. “May I go too?”
Rosalind looked at him, on her side, with a kind of tremulous appeal, as he took her basket out of her hand. It seemed to say “Don’t!” with a distinct sense that it was vain to say so. Aunt Sophy, with that foolish desire to please which went against all her convictions and baffled her own purpose, looked up at them as they stood, Rosalind hesitating and he so eager. “Yes, do; it will cheer you up a little,” the foolish guardian said.
And John Trevanion wrote on calmly, thinking nothing. They abandoned her to her fate. It was such a chance as Rivers could not have hoped for. He could scarcely contain himself as he followed her out of the room. She went very slowly, hoping perhaps even now to be called back, though she scarcely wished to be called back, and would have been disappointed too, perhaps. She could not tell what her feelings were, nor what she was going to do. Yet there came before her eyes as she went out a sudden vision of the other, the stranger, he whom she did not know, who had wooed her in the silence, in her dreams, and penetrated her eyes with eyes not bright and keen, like those of Rivers, but pathetic, like little Johnny’s. Was she going to forsake the visionary for the actual? Rosalind felt that she too was going into battle, not knowing what might come of it; into her first personal encounter with life and a crisis in which she must act for herself.
“I did not hope for anything like this,” he said, hurriedly; “a good angel must have got it for me. I thought I should have to go without a word.”
“Oh, no! there will be many more words; you have promised Aunt Sophy to stay to lunch.”
“To see you in the midst of the family is almost worse than not seeing you at all. Miss Trevanion, you must know. Perhaps I am doing wrong to take advantage of their confidence, but how can I help it? Everything in the world is summed up to me in this moment. Say something to me! To talk of love in common words seems nothing. I know no words that mean half what I mean. Say you will think of me sometimes when I am away.”
Rosalind trembled very much in spite of all she could do to steady herself. They had gone through the hall without speaking, and it was only when they had gained the shelter of the conservatory, in which they were safe from interruption, that he thus burst forth. The interval had been so breathless and exciting that every emotion was intensified. She did not venture to look up at him, feeling as if something might take flame at his eyes.
“Mr. Rivers, I could say that very easily, but perhaps it would not mean what you think.”