But it was not till she had been left to herself for a full five months, and the blue-bells and ragged-robins of the following year were again making themselves common to the rambling eye, that he directly addressed her. She was tying up a group of tall flowering plants in the garden: she knew that he was behind her, but she did not turn. She had subsided into a placid dignity which enabled her when watched to perform any little action with seeming composure—very different from the flutter of her inexperienced days.
‘Are you never going to turn round?’ he at length asked good-humouredly.
She then did turn, and looked at him for a moment without speaking; a certain suspicion looming in her eyes, as if suggested by his perceptible want of ease.
‘How like summer it is getting to feel, is it not?’ she said.
John admitted that it was getting to feel like summer: and, bending his gaze upon her with an earnestness which no longer left any doubt of his subject, went on to ask—
‘Have you ever in these last weeks thought of how it used to be between us?’
She replied quickly, ‘O, John, you shouldn’t begin that again. I am almost another woman now!’
‘Well, that’s all the more reason why I should, isn’t it?’
Anne looked thoughtfully to the other end of the garden, faintly shaking her head; ‘I don’t quite see it like that,’ she returned.
‘You feel yourself quite free, don’t you?’