Keane walked along, drawing his cap over his eyes. The sun was setting full in his face.
"Well, what sport?" cried Fay, running up to them.
"Pretty fair," said Keane, coldly, as he passed her.
It was an hour before the dinner-bell rang. Then he came down cold and calm, particularly brilliant in conversation, more courteous, perhaps, to her than ever, but the frost had gathered round him that the sunny atmosphere of the Beeches had melted; and Fay, though she tried to tease, and to coax, and to win him, could not dissipate it. She felt him an immeasurable distance from her again. He was a learned, haughty, grave philosopher, and she a little naughty child.
As Keane went up-stairs that night, he heard Sydie talking in the hall.
"Yes, my worshipped Fay, I shall be intensely and utterly miserable away from the light of your eyes; but, nevertheless, I must go and see Kingslake from John's next Tuesday, because I've promised; and let one idolize your divine self ever so much, one can't give up one's larks, you know."
Keane ground his teeth with a bitter sigh and a fierce oath.
"Little Fay, I would have loved you more tenderly than that!"
He went in and threw himself on his bed, not to sleep. For the first time for many years he could not summon sleep at his will. He had gone on petting her and amusing himself, thinking of her only as a winning, wayward child. Now he woke with a shock to discover, too late, that she had stolen from him unawares the heart he had so long refused to any woman. With his high intellect and calm philosophy, after his years spent in severe science and cold solitude, the hot well-springs of passion had broken loose again. He longed to take her bright life into his own grave and cheerless one; he longed to feel her warm young heart beat with his own, icebound for so many years; but Little Fay was never to be his.
In the bedroom next to him the General sat, with his feet in his slippers and his dressing-gown round him, smoking his last cheroot before a roaring fire, chuckling complacently over his own thoughts.