"Why, you are quite out of breath, miss; and your cheeks!... I hope you haven't been having words. A better-spoken young fellow than I had fancied; and I'm sure I ask his pardon for the 'gentleman.'"
"Ach," I swept up at my beech-tree, now cautiously unsheathing its first green buds in the lower branches, "I think he must be light in his head."
"And that often comes," replied Mrs Bowater, with undisguised bonhomie, "from being heavy at the heart. Why, miss, he may be a young nobleman in disguise. There's unlikelier things even than that, to judge from that trash of Fanny's. While, as for fish in the sea—it's sometimes wise to be contented with what we can catch."
Who had been talking to me about fish in the sea—quite lately? I thought contemptuously of Pollie and the Dream Book. "I am sorry," I replied, nose in air, "but I cannot follow the allusion."
The charge of vulgarity was the very last, I think, which Mrs Bowater would have lifted a finger to refute. My cheeks flamed hotter to know that she was quietly smiling up there. We walked on in silence.
That night I could not sleep. I was afraid. Life was blackening my mind like the mould of a graveyard. I could think of nothing but one face, one voice—that scorn and longing, thought and fantasy. What if he did love me a little? I might at least have been kind to him. Had I so many friends that I could afford to be harsh and ungrateful? How dreadfully ill he had looked when I scoffed at him. And now what might not have happened to him? I seemed lost to myself. No wonder Fanny.... My body grew cold at a thought; the palms of my hands began to ache.
Half-stifled, I leapt out of bed, and without the least notion of what I was doing, hastily dressed myself, and fled out into the night. I must find him, talk to him, plead with him, before it was too late. And in the trickling starlight, pressed against my own gatepost—there he was.
"Oh," I whispered at him in a fever of relief and shame and apprehensiveness, "what are you doing here? You must go away at once, at once. I forgive you. Yes, yes; I forgive you. But—at once. Keep the letter for me till I come again." His hand was wet with the dew. "Oh, and never say it again. Please, please, if you care for me the least bit in the world, never, never say what you did again." I poured out the heedless words in the sweet-scented quiet of midnight. "Now—now go"; I entreated. "And indeed, indeed I am your friend."
The dark eyes shone quietly close to mine. He sighed. He lifted my fingers, and put them to my breast again. He whispered unintelligible words between us, and was gone. No more stars for me that night. I slept sound until long after dawn....
Softly as thistledown the days floated into eternity; yet they were days of expectation and action. April was her fickle self; not so Mrs Monnerie. Her letter to Mrs Bowater must have been a marvel of tact. Apartments had been engaged for us at a little watering-place in Dorsetshire, called Lyme Regis. Mrs Bowater and I were to spend at least a fortnight there alone together, and after our return Mrs Monnerie herself was to pay me a visit, and see with her own eyes if her prescription had been successful. After that, perhaps, if I were so inclined, and my landlady agreed with Mr Pellew that it would be good for me, I might spend a week or two with her in London. What a twist of the kaleidoscope. I had sown never a pinch of seed, yet here was everything laughing and blossoming around me, like the wilderness in Isaiah.