'And I was so rude to you at first,' pursues she, lightly brushing, as she speaks, her own lips with a bit of mignonette she has gathered from the odorous bed at her feet, perhaps to hide the slight tremble of which she cannot but be conscious in them—'so angry at being sent in to dinner with you! but, then'—with another friendly starlit smile—'you must remember that I did not know how well you could mow!'
He is still silent, his throat choked with words he dare not utter. Oh, if she would only stop! But she goes on in all innocence:
'You never took your bunch of lavender after all to-day. I thought of bringing it up for you to-night, but then I remembered that I should see you to-morrow, so I did not; I wish I had now.'
Cannot he find even one word? one word of prayer to her in mercy to be silent? Not one!
'Are you going by an early train?' continues she; 'because, if not, I might send up Alfred with it in the morning, if you really cared to have it.'
Perhaps it is that last most unnecessary clause that loosens the string of his tied tongue.
'Do not!' he says almost rudely; 'I hope I shall never smell the scent of lavender again!'
For a moment she looks at him, astonished at his discourtesy; but probably his face explains it, for her eyes drop. When next she speaks it is in a rather colder key.
'At all events I must send you back your books; you left some books with us to-day, if you remember.'
If he remember the Keats from which he was to have read aloud to her to-morrow, sitting beside her under the Judas-tree, with her little finches calling to her from the house, with Mink crouched on her white skirt, and the parrot waddling over the sward, with his toes turned in, to have his head scratched by her! If he remember! She must be the very 'belle dame sans merci' of whom John Keats spake, to ask him that! May not he at least beg her to keep his Keats to remember him by—laying here and there among the leaves a sprig of the lavender they together plucked? No! No! No! Out of her life he and his Keats must depart, as she and her lavender out of his. Who, in his place, will read her 'La Belle Dame sans merci'? As if in devilish mockery of the jealous anguish of this question comes Betty's disgusting refrain darting across his mind: