“Yesterday? Yesterday?” he cried, almost angrily. “Bah, it is an age since yesterday!”
She could make no answer to that, though she knew well what he meant. If she answered him it was only by suffering him to gaze at her in an eloquent silence—a silence in which his eyes cried again and again, “How beautiful you are!” While her eyes, downcast, under trembling lashes, her heart beaten down, defenceless, cried only for “Quarter, quarter!”
They were yards apart. The table, and on it Miss Sibson’s squat workbox and a pile of longcloth, was between them. Miss Sibson herself could have desired nothing more proper. And yet—
Farewell, farewell, my faithless shield,
Thy lord at length is forced to yield.
Vain, vain is every outward care,
The foe’s within and triumphs there!
It was all over. In her ears would ring for ever his words of worship—the cry of the man to the woman, “How beautiful you are!” She would thrill with pleasure when she thought of them, and burn with shame, and never, never, never be the same again! And for him, with that cry forced from him, love had become present, palpable, real, and the idea of marriage real also; an idea to be withstood, to be combated, to be treated as foolish, Byronic, impossible. But an idea which would not leave him any more than the image of her gentle beauty, indelibly stamped on his brain, would leave him. He might spend some days or some weeks in doubt and wretchedness. But from that moment the odds were against him—he was young, and passion had never had her way with him—as seriously against him as against the army that with spies and traitors in its midst moves against an united foe.
Not a word that was convenant had passed between them, though so much had passed, when a hasty footstep crossed the forecourt, and stopped at the door. The knocker fell sharply twice, and recalled them to realities.
“I—I must go,” she faltered, wresting herself from the spell of his eyes. “I have said what I—I hope you understand, and I—it is time I went.” How her heart was beating!
“Oh, no, no!”
“Yes, I must go!”
Too late! A loud voice in the passage, a heavy step, announced a visitor. The door flew open, and there entered, pushing the startled maid aside, the Honourable Bob Flixton, at the height of his glory, loud, impudent, and unabashed.