It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in an instant that she did not know the blighting news.
“Giles, why didn’t you come across to me?” she asked, with arch reproach. “Didn’t you see me sitting there ever so long?”
“Oh yes,” he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she resolved to soften it.
“I have had another letter from my father,” she hastened to continue. “He thinks he may come home this evening. And—in view of his hopes—it will grieve him if there is any little difference between us, Giles.”
“There is none,” he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.
“Still—I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being uncomfortable at the inn.”
“I have, Grace, I’m sure.”
“But you speak in quite an unhappy way,” she returned, coming up close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained to her. “Don’t you think you will ever be happy, Giles?”
He did not reply for some instants. “When the sun shines on the north front of Sherton Abbey—that’s when my happiness will come to me!” said he, staring as it were into the earth.
“But—then that means that there is something more than my offending you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I—did not like to let you kiss me in the Abbey—well, you know, Giles, that it was not on account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the true reason—the sole one. But I do not want to be hard—God knows I do not,” she said, her voice fluctuating. “And perhaps—as I am on the verge of freedom—I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any harm in your kissing me.”