"No; not disagreeable, only cold," he returned, with a smile of genuine content, for this admission pleased him well. They had stopped simultaneously at the little gate, and Queenie made a movement as though to go in, but he would not suffer it. "No; you shall not leave me in this way, we will have another turn," he said cheerfully. "Let us talk of something else—of yourself and your plans. Do you know, I feel quite dull at the thought of losing you and Emmie to-morrow. I wonder how much you intend to miss us."
"More than I ever missed any one in my whole life before," was the answer on Queenie's lips, but she prudently forbore to utter it, as she moved again by his side in the darkness. Did no warning monitor within her whisper that this man was growing dangerously dear to her; that the snare was already spread for her unconscious feet?
"He means to marry Dora; but I have a right to claim him still as my friend. No one shall steal his friendship from me. I will have what belongs to me," she had said to herself, almost fiercely; but the falseness of the sophistry was glossed over and hidden from her eyes. For the last few days a great sadness had crept over her. Since the evening Dora had passed through the little gate, and had walked with him up and down in the sunset, some visionary hope, baseless and unsubstantial as a dream, had vanished from her heart.
Of what avail was her idle whim now? Would it not have been better, so she told herself, to have shaken off the dust of Hepshaw from her feet? Whose blame was it if she had tangled her own life? Some impulse, some undefinable influence, had drawn her to weave these strange plans of hers; more than a girl's fancy and love of mystery and adventure were wrapped up in them. But might it not be that bitter failure and remorse should be her portion hereafter?
Would there not have been greater peace and safety for her in that house in Carlisle? Queenie asked herself these questions with a sigh long after she had left Garth, and retired to her own room, where Emmie was slumbering peacefully. She kissed the child, and placed herself under the shadow of the window-curtain, and watched, for the last time, the tiny red spark emerging every now and then from under the trees.
"Miss him! he little knows how I shall miss him!" she said to herself, bitterly. "Right or wrong, he has got into my life, and I cannot get him out. Does he love Dora, I wonder? I cannot make up my mind; but he will marry her, for all that; and then, then, if I find it very hard to bear, if she will not let me keep him as a friend, we will go away, Emmie and I, somewhere a long way off, where I can have plenty of work, and forget, and begin afresh."
But when Queenie came to this point she suddenly broke down; an oppressive sense of loneliness, as new as it was terrible, crushed on her with overwhelming force. For the first time Queenie's brave spirit seemed utterly broken, and some of the bitterest tears she ever shed wetted the child's pillow.
As for Garth, he strolled on for a long time, placidly enjoying his cigar. He had delivered his little lecture, and had then sent the girl in soothed and comforted; so he told himself. It is true a sad and wistful glance from two large dark eyes somewhat haunted him at intervals, but he drove it persistently away.
"She is a sweet girl, a very sweet girl; but she has her faults, like all of us," he said to himself. "I am glad I put her right about Dora. If Dora ever comes here, it would not do for Miss Marriott not to be friendly with her. Dora would have a right to expect then that the others should give way to her, if she ever comes here as my wife;" and here the young man's pulses quickened a little, and in the darkness the hot blood rushed to his face. "Dora my wife! how strange it sounds! Well, I suppose it will come to that some day; things seem shaping themselves that way. She will expect it, and her father too, after what has passed. I fancy there is a kind of understanding between us. I wonder what sort of feeling she has for me? She keeps a fellow at such a distance, there is no finding out; but I'll master her yet. She will soon find out, if I once make up my mind, that I am not one to bear any shilly-shallying. I don't think I could stand nonsense from any woman, not even from Dora. Her father told me once that if he died Dora would not have a penny, though the other girls have tidy little sums, each of them. I like her all the better for that. Well, after all there is no hurry. Being in love is all very well, but it is better to take life easily, and digest matters a little;" and with a conscious laugh that sounded oddly to him in the darkness, Garth swung back the little gate, and walked towards the house.
It was arranged that the sisters' modest luggage should be sent over to the cottage in the course of the morning, and that Queenie should take possession of her new abode as soon as her afternoon duties were discharged, and that Cathy and Emmie should be there to receive her.