“I thought you had already come to an understanding,” she observed, calmly.
“Have we? I hope so; I had not heard that,” he said, quickly. “How did you hear?”
Without warning she flushed scarlet to her neck; and she was as amazed as he at the surging color staining her white skin.
She could not endure that—she could not face him—so she bent her head a little in recognition of his presence and stepped past him, out along the river-bank.
He looked after her, wondering what he could have said.
She wondered, too, and her wonder grew that instead of self-pity, repugnance, and deep dread, she should feel such a divine relief from the terror that had possessed her.
Now at least she knew the worst. This was the man!
She strove to place him, to recall his face. She could not. All along she had pictured Crawford as an older man. And this broad-shouldered, tanned young fellow was Crawford, after all! Where could her eyes have been? How absurd that her indifference should have so utterly blinded her!
She stood a moment on the lawn, closing her eyes.
Oh, now she had no difficulty in recalling his face—in fact the difficulty was to shut it out, for it was before her eyes, open or shut—it was before her when she entered her bedroom and sank into a cushioned chair by the breezy window. And she took her burning cheeks in both hands and rested her elbows on her knees.