He will never forgive either himself or them if they ignorantly indulge in any endearment under his very eyes. But they do not. There are no interlacing arms to disentwine, nothing to make them spring apart, when at length they look up and take in the fact—an unwelcome fact it must needs be—of their invasion.
On hearing approaching footsteps, Byng rolls over on his back in the grass; on perceiving that most of the footsteps are those of ladies, he springs to his feet. Elizabeth remains sitting on her camp-stool.
"What a coincidence!" cries Cecilia, breaking into a laugh.
They are all grateful to her for the remark, though it is rather a silly one, as there is no particular coincidence in the case. Burgoyne is irritatedly conscious that Amelia is covertly observing him, and before he can check himself he has thrown over his shoulder at her one of those snubbing glances from which, for the last ten days, he has painstakenly and remorsefully refrained. It is not a happy moment to look at poor Amelia, as she has not yet cooled down from the heat of her climb through the fir-wood—a heat that translates itself into patchy flushes all over her face, not sparing even her forehead. Elizabeth is flushed too. She has not met Miss Wilson since she had declined Burgoyne's offer of bringing his betrothed to see her, and in her deprecating eyes there is a guilty and tremulous recollection of this fact. But below the guilt and the deprecation and the tremor, what else is there in Elizabeth's eyes? What of splendid and startling, and that comes but once in a lifetime? Rather than be obliged to give a name to that vague radiance, Jim turns his look back upon his own too glowing dear one.
"Did you come here all alone? You two all alone? What fun!" asks Cecilia, with an air of delighted curiosity.
Again her companions inwardly thank her. It is the question that both—though with different degrees of eagerness—have been thirsting to ask.
"Alone?—oh no!" replies Elizabeth, with that uneasy, frightened look that Burgoyne has always noticed on her face when she has been brought into unwilling relation with strangers. "My mother is here—she came with us; why, where is she?"—looking round with a startled air—"she was here a moment ago."
A grim smile curves Jim's mouth. It is evident that the unhappy Mrs. Le Marchant, worn out with her rôle of duenna, has slipped away without being missed by either of her companions. Would they have even discovered her absence but for Cecilia's query?
"Mrs. Le Marchant was here a moment ago," echoes Byng, addressing the company generally; "but"—dodging his friend's eyes—"she said she was a little stiff from sitting so long; she must be quite close by."
"I will go and look for her," says Elizabeth, confused, and rising from her rickety seat as she speaks; but Amelia, who is nearest to her, puts out a friendly hand in prohibition.