“You will never do it?”
“Before dark? No, perhaps not!” She raised her hand and put back a tress of hair which had strayed from its fellows. “And I shall be tired. But I shall be much surprised if I cannot walk ten miles at a pinch.”
“I shall be surprised if you walk ten miles to-day,” he retorted. “My plans for you are quite different. Have you got what you came to fetch?”
She had steadied herself, and was by this time at her ease. She made a little grimace. “No,” she said. “It will not be ready for quarter of an hour.”
He rang Dr. Pepper’s bell. An awestruck apprentice, who had watched the interview through the dusty window of the surgery, showed himself.
“Be good enough to send the medicine for Miss Audley to Mrs. Jenkinson’s,” Audley said. “You understand?”
“Yes, my lord! Certainly, my lord!” She was going to protest. He turned to her, silenced her. “And now I take possession of you,” he said, supremely careless what the lad heard. “You are coming to The Butterflies to take tea, or sherry, or whatever you take when you have walked five miles.”
“Oh, Lord Audley!”
“And then I am going to drive you as far as the old Cross, and walk up the hill with you—as far as I choose.”
“Oh, but I cannot!” Mary cried, coloring charmingly, but whether with pleasure or embarrassment she could not tell. She only knew that his ridiculous way of taking possession of her, the very masterfulness of it, moved her strangely. “I cannot indeed. What would my uncle say?”