She was quivering with the memories which her story had called up, and it was only by an effort that she checked the impulse to withdraw her hand. “Had you been there——”
“I hope I should have done as much,” he replied complacently. “But it was impossible.”
“Yes,” she said. And though she knew that her tone was cold, she could not help it. For many, many times during the last month she had pondered over his long absence and the chill of his letters. Many times she had told herself that he was treating her with scant affection, scant confidence, almost with scant respect. But then again she had reflected that she must be mistaken, that she brought him nothing but herself, and that if he did not love her he would not have sought her. And telling herself that she expected too much of love, too much of her lover, she had schooled herself to be patient, and had resolved that not a word of complaint should pass her lips.
But to assume a warmth which she did not feel was another matter. This was beyond her.
He, for his part, set down her manner to a natural depression. “Poor child!” he said, “you have had a sad time. Well, we must make up for it. As soon as we can make arrangements you must leave that gloomy house where everything reminds you of your uncle and—and we must make a fresh start. Do you know where I am taking you?”
She saw that they had turned off the road and were following a track that scrambled upwards through the scrub that clothed the slope below the Gatehouse. It slanted in the direction of the Great House. “Not to Beaudelays?” she said.
“Yes—to Beaudelays. But don’t be afraid. Not to the house.”
“Oh no!” she cried. “I don’t think I could bear to go there to-day!”
“I know. But I want you to see the gardens. I want you to see what might have been ours, what we might have enjoyed had fortune been more kind to us! Had we been rich, Mary! It is hard to believe that you have never seen even the outside of the Great House.”
“I have never been beyond the Iron Gate.”