"I don't know any reason why you shouldn't speak now. It would be well that we should understand each other," he said.
But this took away all power from Rintoul. He almost trembled as he stood before his father's too keen—too penetrating eyes.
"Oh, don't let me trouble you now," he said, nervously; "and besides, I have something to do. Dear me, it is three o'clock!" he cried, looking at his watch and hurrying away. But he had really no engagement for three o'clock. It was the time when Nora, escaping from her old lady, came out for a walk; and they had met on several occasions, though never by appointment. Nora, for her part, would not have consented to make any appointment. Already she began to feel herself in a false position. She was willing to accept and keep inviolable the secret with which he had trusted her; but that she herself, a girl full of high-mindedness and honour, should be his secret too, and carry on a clandestine intercourse which nobody knew anything of, was to Nora the last humiliation. She had not written home since it happened; for to write home and not to tell her mother of what had happened, would have seemed to the girl falsehood. She felt false with Miss Barbara; she had an intolerable sense at once of being wronged, and wrong, in the presence of Lady Lindores and Edith. She would no more have made an appointment to meet him than she would have told a lie. But poor Nora, who was only a girl after all, notwithstanding these high principles of hers, took her walk daily along the Lindores road. It was the quietest, the prettiest. She had always liked it better than any other—so she said to herself; and naturally Rintoul, who could not go to Dunearn save by that way, met her there. She received him, not with any rosy flush of pleasure, but with a blush that was hot and angry, resolving that to-morrow she would turn her steps in a different direction, and that this should not occur again; and she did not even give him her hand when they met, as she would have done to the doctor or the minister, or any one of the ordinary passers-by.
"You are angry with me, Nora," he said.
"I don't know that I have any right to be angry. We have very little to do with each other, Lord Rintoul."
"Nora!" he cried; "Nora! do you want to break my heart. What is this? It is not so very long since!——"
"It is long enough," she said, "to let me see——It is better that we should not say anything more about that. One is a fool—one is taken by surprise—one does not think what it means——"
"Do you imagine I will let myself be thrown off like this?" he cried, with great agitation. "Nora, why should you despise me so—all for the sake of old Rolls?"
"It is not all for the sake of old Rolls."
"I will go and see him, if you like, to-day. I will find out from him what he means. It is his own doing, it is not my doing. You know I was more surprised than any one. Nora, think! If you only think, you will see that you are unreasonable. How could I stand up and contradict a man who had accused himself?"