After this the three girls went out together to the garden, still lying sweet in the calm of the long summer twilight, under a young moon and some early stars. They did not speak a great deal. They were all considerably absorbed with thoughts of this same hero, who, after all, had not taken an effective method of keeping their interest alive.
And Marian did not know how or whence it was that this doubtful and uncertain paladin came to her side in the pleasant darkness, but was startled by his voice in her ear as she leaned once more over the low garden-gate. “It was here I saw you first,” said Louis, and Marian’s heart leaped in her breast, half with the suddenness of the words, half with—something else. Louis, who had been so haughty and ungracious all the evening—Louis, Rachel’s idol, everybody’s superior—yet he spoke low in the startled ear of Marian, as if that first seeing had been an era in his life.
“Come with us,” said Louis, as Rachel at sight of him hastened to get her bonnet—“come along this enchanted road a dozen steps into fairyland, and back again. I forget everything, even myself, on such a night.”
And they went, scarcely answering, yet more satisfied with this brief reference to their knowledge of him, than if the king had forsaken his nature, and become as confidential as Rachel. They went their dozen steps on what was merely the terraced pathway, soft, dark, and grassy, to Agnes and Rachel, who went first in anxious conversation, but which the other two, coming silently behind, had probably a different idea of. Marian at least could not help cogitating these same adjectives, with a faint inquiry within herself, what it was which could make this an enchanted road or fairyland.
CHAPTER XXII.
A BEGINNING.
The next morning, while the mother and daughters were still in the full fervour of discussion about this same remarkable Louis, he himself was seen for the first time in the early daylight passing the window, with that singular rapidity of step which he possessed in common with his sister. They ceased their argument after seeing him—why, no one could have told; but quite unresolved as the question was, and though Mamma’s first judgment, unsoftened by that twilight walk, was still decidedly unfavourable to Louis, they all dropped the subject tacitly and at once. Then Mamma went about various domestic occupations; then Agnes dropped into the chair which stood before that writing-book upon the table, and, with an attention much broken and distracted, gradually fell away into her own ideal world; and then Marian, leading Bell and Beau with meditative hands, glided forth softly to the garden, with downcast face and drooping eyes, full of thought. The children ran away from her at once when their little feet touched the grass, but Marian went straying along the paths, absorbed in her meditation, her pretty arms hanging by her side, her pretty head bent, her light fair figure gliding softly in shadow over the low mossy paling and the close-clipped hedge within. She was thinking only what it was most natural she should think, about the stranger of last night; yet now and then into the stream of her musing dropped, with the strangest disturbance and commotion, these few quiet words spoken in her ear,—“It was here I saw you first.” How many times, then, had Louis seen her? and why did he recollect so well that first occasion? and what did he mean?
While she was busy with these fancies, all at once, Marian could not tell how, as suddenly as he appeared last night, Louis was here again—here, within the garden of the Old Wood Lodge, walking by Marian’s side, a second long shadow upon the close-clipped hedge and the mossy paling, rousing her to a guilty consciousness that she had been thinking of him, which brought blush after blush in a flutter of “sweet shamefacednesse” to her cheek, and weighed down still more heavily the shy and dreamy lids of these beautiful eyes.
The most unaccountable thing in the world! but Marian, who had received with perfect coolness the homage of Sir Langham, and whose conscience smote her with no compunctions for the slaying of the gifted American, had strangely lost her self-possession to-day. She only replied in the sedatest and gravest manner possible to the questions of her companion—looked anxiously at the parlour window for an opportunity of calling Agnes, and with the greatest embarrassment longed for the presence of some one to end this tête-à-tête. Louis, on the contrary, exerted himself for her amusement, and was as different from the Louis of last night as it was possible to conceive.
“Ay, there it is,” said Louis, who had just asked her what she knew of Oxford—“there it is, the seat of learning, thrusting up all its pinnacles to the sun; but I think, if the world were wise, this glitter and shining might point to the dark, dark ignorance outside of it, even more than to the little glow within.”
Now this was not much in Marian’s way—but her young squire, who would have submitted himself willingly to her guidance had she given any, was not yet acquainted at all with the ways of Marian.