“And all these months within a mile!”
“All these months within a mile. But he did not wish it. It was one of the first things he made me understand.”
“Ah! Well, there is an end of that!” And again so matter-of-fact was his tone that she had to struggle against the impulse to withdraw her arm. “Now, if there is any one who has a right to be there, it is you! And I want to be the one to take you there. I want you to see for yourself that it is only fallen grandeur that you are marrying, Mary, the thing that has been, not the thing that is. By G—d! I don’t know that there is a creature in the world—certainly there is none in my world—more to be pitied than a poor peer!”
“That’s nothing to me,” she said. And, indeed, his words had brought him nearer to her than anything he had said. So that when, taking advantage of the undergrowth which hid them from the road below, he put his arm about her and assisted her in her climb, she yielded readily. “To think,” he said, “that you have never seen this place! I wonder that after we parted you did not go the very next morning to visit it!”
“Perhaps I wished to be taken there by you.”
“By Jove! Do you know that that is the most lover-like thing you have said.”
“I may improve with practice,” she rejoined. “Indeed, it is possible,” she continued demurely, “that we both need practice!”
She had not a notion that he was in two minds; that one half of him was revelling in the hour, pleased with possession, enjoying her beauty, dwelling on the dainty curves of her figure, while the other uncertain, wavering, was asking continually, “Shall I or shall I not?” But if she did not guess thoughts to which she had no clue he was sharp enough to understand hers. “Ah! you are there, are you?” he said. “Wait! Presently, when we are out of sight of that cursed road——”
“I didn’t find fault!”
On that there was a little banter between them, gallant and smiling on his part, playful and defensive on hers, which lasted until they reached a door leading into the lower garden. It was a rusty, damp-stained door, once painted green, and masked by trees somewhat higher than the underwood through which they had climbed. Ivy hung from the wall above it, rank grass grew against it, the air about it was dank, and in summer sent up the smell of wild leeks. Once under-gardeners had used it to come and go, and many a time on moonlit nights maids had stolen through it to meet their lovers in the coppice or on the road.