She has got behind a cane chair, and is tilting it up, with her hands clutching the gilt top. She ought not to let him see the sickly apprehension in her eyes; and yet if she does not, if she allows him to approach her, if he kisses her, and expects her to kiss him back, by what hair’s breadth will she be separated from the outcasts in the street? There is gross exaggeration in the idea, which is weighted by the offended purity of all her former life; yet there is truth too. But Rupert’s steps pause far short of her barrier, and there is neither a claiming of undoubted rights, neither enterprise nor even entreaty in his eyes.
“Improvement, should you say?” he asks, with cool interest; adding, “How do you think he looks—better or worse than you expected?”
“Better—worse!” she stammers, contradicting herself, quite put off her balance by the fraternal ease and matter-of-factness of his tone. It seems like a return to the blessed brotherly period, before they had been driven into exchanging the airy chains of their phantom engagement for the gyves and handcuffs of a real one. After all, he had been driven into it as much as she! There is balm in the thought. “I mean I cannot quite make up my mind until he has settled down; he is certainly much thinner.”
“Yes; his clothes hang a bit loose upon him.”
Lavinia starts; imperceptibly, she hopes. Has Rupert given himself the word to use no phrase that does not bring Binning in very self before her? Binning’s clothes, too, hang loose upon him. Lest her start should not have been imperceptible, she covers it quickly with a remark.
“He seems in excellent spirits.”
“Yes; but we all are that, aren’t we?” He says it simply, and without any special observation of her to note its effect; and yet once again, for the third time, that nameless suspicious fear of his having found her out lays its chilly fingers upon her. “Shall we walk off some of our exuberant cheerfulness? Do you feel inclined for a stroll?”
Her last “stroll” returns upon her memory with dizzying vividness.
“Isn’t the sun rather hot still?”
“We shall not feel him in the woods, or in Rumsey Brake by the pool.”