As Eve walked through the fields towards the wood, and neared the trees and rocks, she began to think that she had made a mistake. It would not do for Jane to see Watt. She would talk about him, and Barbara would hear, and question her. If Barbara asked her why she had gone out at dusk to meet the boy, what answer could she make?
When Eve came to the gate into the wood, she stood still, and holding the gate half open, told Jane she might stay there, for she would go on by herself.
Jane was surprised.
‘Please, Miss, I’ve nothing to take me back to the house.’ Eve hastily protested that she did not want her to return: she was to remain at the gate—’And if I call—come on to me, Jane, not otherwise. I have a headache, and I want to be alone.’
‘Very well, Miss.’
But Jane was puzzled, and said to herself, ‘There’s a lover, sure as eggs in April.’
Then Eve closed the gate between herself and Jane, and went on. Before disappearing into the shade of the trees, she looked back, and saw the maid where she had left her, plaiting grass.
A lover! A lover is the philosopher’s stone that turns the sordid alloy of life into gold. The idea of a lover was the most natural solution of the caprice in Miss Eve’s conduct. As every road loads to Rome, so in the servant-maid mind does every line of life lead to a sweetheart.
Jane, having settled that her young mistress had gone on to meet a lover, next questioned who that lover could be, and here she was utterly puzzled. Sure enough Miss Eve had been to a dance at the Cloberrys’, but whom she had met there, and to whom lost her heart, that Jane did not know, and that also Jane was resolved to ascertain.
She noiselessly unhasped the gate, and stole along the path. The burnished brazen sky of evening shone between the tree trunks, but the foliage had lost its verdure in the gathering dusk. The honeysuckles poured forth their scent in waves. The air near the hedge and deep into the wood was honeyed with it. White and yellow speckled currant moths were flitting about the hedge. Jane stole along, stealthily, from tree to tree, fearful lest Eve should turn and catch her spying. A large Scotch pine cast a shadow under it like ink. On reaching that, Jane knew she could see the top of the Raven Rock.