"Never!—some time or other—soon!" answers Esther, hastily and contradictorily, running up the gamut of adverbs in search of the one most likely to obtain her release. Having gained that object, she jumps over the stile, and disappears into a sea of mist.
Meanwhile St. John, having arrived at Blessington, and given up his horse to a groom, enters the house; but the confinement of roof and walls is insupportable to him. So he goes out again, and, walking up the avenue, stations himself at the gate. There, resting his arms on the topmost bar, he stands, straining his eyes down the road by which he expects to see Esther and her companion make their appearance.
"They will defer their parting to the last moment—that is of course," he says to himself, in his lonely pain. "Well," taking out his watch and minuting them, in order to drink the cup of his jealous misery to the dregs, "it is not more than a mile and a half from here to the place where I passed them; let us see how long a time they will manage to be in doing the distance."
He has not long to wait. Before five minutes are over he hears the sound of a horse's feet. "Linley must not see him watching them," he thinks, with a sort of shame at himself, and so steps back into the shade of a great tree.
Linley rides by alone. His face is turned towards the house, in whose great black façade the lighted windows make oblong-shaped red glories; his eyes are trying to fix upon Esther's casement. Of course he hits upon the wrong one, and directs his sentimental gaze towards the apartment where, with wig off and teeth out, Mrs. Blessington, aided by her maid, is slowly moving through the stages of her dinner toilette.
"She must have taken the short-cut across the park," thinks Gerard, with a sense of unwilling relief. "Afraid of my telling tales of her escapade, I suppose."
He retraces his steps down the avenue, and, following a back road that skirts the kitchen-garden, reaches another gate that leads into the park, and there stands and waits again.
The short-cut has proved rather a long one. Part of the park has been fenced off, to keep the deer and the Scotch cattle separate; a gate which she had reckoned upon finding open, she discovers to be padlocked, and has to make a long circuit round to another gate.
As she toils weary-footed through the wet grass, vague alarms assail him that watches for her. Can any evil have come to her in the darkness? Most improbably in that still, safe park. After a while, and when his reasonless fears are beginning to gather more strongly about his heart, he hears the sound as of some one running pantingly. Esther is not so good at running as she was in the old Glan-yr-Afon days. She has been flying along in hot haste, with a mixed fear of Scotch bulls and goblins in pursuit. As she approaches the gate, Gerard opens it for her. Seeing it swing open without any apparent cause, she gives a great nervous start; then, discovering the motive cause of the phenomenon, drops into a walk.
"It is rather late, Mr. Gerard, I'm afraid, isn't it so?" she asks, with some hesitation at this disobedience to his command of silence. And yet, surely, if he had meant not to speak to her, he would not have come thither.