But she repelled him.
“In either case,” she said, her brow slightly puckered, “we must halt to-night at the inn of which you spoke.”
“The inn on Windermere—yes. And we can decide there, sweet, whether we go by land or sea; whether we will rejoin the north road at Carlisle or cross from Whitehaven to”—he hesitated an instant—“to Dumfries.”
She was romantic to the pitch of a day which valued sensibility more highly than sense, and which had begun to read the poetry of Byron without ceasing to read the Mysteries of Udolpho; and she was courageous to the point of folly. Even now laughter gleamed under her long lashes, and the bubblings of irresponsible youth were never very far from her lips. Still, with much folly, with vast recklessness and an infinitude of ignorance, she was yet no fool—though a hundred times a day she said foolish things. In the present circumstances respect for herself rather than distrust of her lover taught her that she stood on slippery ways and instilled a measure of sobriety.
“At the inn,” she said, “you will put me in charge of the landlady.” And looking through the window, she carolled a verse of a song as irrelevant as snow in summer.
“But——” he paused.
“There is a landlady, I suppose?”
“Yes, but——”
“You will do what I say to-day,” she replied firmly—and now the fine curves of her lips were pressed together, and she hummed no more—“if you wish me to obey you to-morrow.”
“Dearest, you know——”