IN A FOG.
Hazel was accompanied to her carriage of course, as usual. But when she was shut in, she heard an unwelcome voice saying to the coachman, 'Drive slowly, Reo; the night is very dark;' and immediately the carriage door was opened again, and the speaker took his seat beside her; without asking leave this time. A passing glare from the lamps of another carriage shewed her head and hands down on the window-sill, in the way she had come from Greenbush. Neither head nor hands stirred now.
Her companion was silent and let her be still, until the carriage had moved out of the Moscheloo grounds and was quietly making its way along the dark high road. Lamps flung some light right and left from the coach box; but within the darkness was deep. The reflection from trees and bushes, the gleam of fence rails, the travelling spots of illumination in the road, did not much help matters there.
'Miss Hazel,' said Rollo,—and he spoke, though very quietly, with a sort of breath of patient impatience,—'I have come with you to-night because I could not let you drive home alone such a dark night, and because I have something to say to you which will not bear to wait a half-hour longer. Can you listen to me?'
'I am listening, sir,' she said, again in a sort of dull passiveness. 'May I keep this position? I think I must be tired.'
'Are you very angry with me?' he asked gently.
'No,' she said in the same tone. 'I believe not. I wish I could be angry with people. It is the easiest way.'
'If you are not angry, give me your hand once more.'
'Are we to execute any further gyrations?'
'Give it to me, and we will see.'