Breathless, hardly knowing what she felt, or what storm shook her, she could not speak. The wagon came creaking past them, the driver clinging to the chain of the slipper. When it was gone by she found her voice. “It shall be as you will,” she said, and her tone thrilled him. “But I want to think. It has been so sudden, I am frightened. I am frightened, and—yes, I think I am happy. But please to let me go now. I am safe here—in two minutes I shall be at home.”
He tried to keep her, but “Let me go now,” she pleaded. “Later it shall be as you wish—always as you wish. But let me go now.”
He gave way then. He said a few words while he held her hands, and he said them very well. Then he let her go. Before the dusk hid her she turned and waved her hand, and he waved his. He stood, listening. He heard the sound of her footsteps grow fainter and fainter as she climbed the hill, until they were lost in the rustle of the wind through the undergrowth. At last he turned and trudged down the hill.
“Well, I’ve done it,” he muttered presently. “And Uncle John may find what he likes, damn him! After all, she’s handsome enough to turn any man’s head, and it makes me safe! But I’ll go slow. I’ll go slow now. There’s no hurry.”
CHAPTER XXIII
BLORE UNDER WEAVER
Gratitude and liking, and the worship of strength which is as natural in a woman as the worship of beauty in a man, form no bad imitation of love, and often pass into love as imperceptibly as the brook becomes a river. The morning light brought Mary no repentance. Misgivings she had, as what lover has not, were the truth told. Was her love as perfect as Etruria’s, as unselfish, as absorbing? She doubted. But in all honesty she hoped that it might become so; and when she dwelt on the man who had done so much for her, and thought so well for her, who had so much to offer and made so little of the offering, her heart swelled with gratitude, and if she did not love she fancied that she did.
So much was changed for her! She had wondered more than once what would happen to her, if her uncle died. That fear was put from her. Toft—she had been vexed with Toft. How small a matter that seemed now! And Peter Basset? He had been kind to her, and a pang did pierce her heart on his account. But he had recovered very quickly, she reflected. He had shown himself cold enough and distant enough at his last visit! And then she smiled as she thought how differently her new lover had assailed her, with what force, what arrogance, what insistence—and yet with a force and arrogance and insistence to which it was pleasant to yield.
She did not with all this forget that she would be Lady Audley, she, whose past had been so precarious, whose prospects had been so dark, whose fate it might have been to travel through life an obscure teacher! She had not been woman if she had not thought of this; nor if she had failed, when she thought of it, to breathe a prayer for the gallant lover who had found her and saved her, and had held it enough that she was an Audley. He might have chosen far and wide. He had chosen her.
No wonder that Mrs. Toft saw a change in her. “Law, Miss,” she remarked, when she came in to remove the breakfast. “One would think a ten-mile walk was the making of you! It’s put a color into your cheeks that would shame a June rose! And to be sure,” with a glance at the young lady’s plate, “not much eaten either!”
“I am not hungry, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said meekly. “I drove back to the foot of the hill.”