“Where did he kiss you besides here?”
“Sitting on—a tomb in the—churchyard—and other places,” she answered with slow recklessness.
“Never mind, never mind,” he exclaimed, on seeing her tears and perturbation. “I don’t want to grieve you. I don’t care.”
But Knight did care.
“It makes no difference, you know,” he continued, seeing she did not reply.
“I feel cold,” said Elfride. “Shall we go home?”
“Yes; it is late in the year to sit long out of doors: we ought to be off this ledge before it gets too dark to let us see our footing. I daresay the horse is impatient.”
Knight spoke the merest commonplace to her now. He had hoped to the last moment that she would have volunteered the whole story of her first attachment. It grew more and more distasteful to him that she should have a secret of this nature. Such entire confidence as he had pictured as about to exist between himself and the innocent young wife who had known no lover’s tones save his—was this its beginning? He lifted her upon the horse, and they went along constrainedly. The poison of suspicion was doing its work well.
An incident occurred on this homeward journey which was long remembered by both, as adding shade to shadow. Knight could not keep from his mind the words of Adam’s reproach to Eve in PARADISE LOST, and at last whispered them to himself—
“Fool’d and beguiled: by him thou, I by thee!”