‘I will go and promenade myself for a little while,’ he said. ‘In half an hour I will return.’
He raised his hat as he might have done to a duchess. She stood a little aside, to let him pass, but did not allow her eyes to rest on him for a moment. He turned and took the path which led up the ravine.
Mora sank down wearily on the seat he had vacated. At that moment she felt as if she would have been grateful for the earth to open and swallow her up. She was appalled at the blackness of the gulf to the edge of which her husband had just dragged her. What should she do? Whither should she turn? To whom should she look for help? Alas! in all the wide world there was no one who could help her—least of all the man whose strong protecting love had seemed but yesterday as though it were able to shield her from every harm.
‘I am in the coils of a Python that will slowly but surely strangle me,’ she said. ‘Yes—death alone can release me. And only yesterday I was so happy! If I could but have died at the moment Harold pressed his lips to mine! Why does he not come? I must tell him everything—everything. And after that?’ She shuddered, and rose to her feet. ‘And he loves me so much!’ she said with a heart-broken sigh. ‘Poor Harold! Poor Harold!’
Scarcely conscious of what she was doing, she turned and took the same path that she had taken before when she went to watch for Colonel Woodruffe’s coming up the valley. Her one burning desire now was to see him; beyond that, her mind at present refused to go.
‘I am afraid that as an ambassador the colonel was a failure.’
The speaker was Mr Etheridge, and it was to Clarice Loraine that his remark was addressed.
Mr Etheridge had had pointed out to him and had duly admired the view so much extolled by the young girl, and the two were now slowly sauntering back to their starting-point. By this time Clarice felt herself quite at ease with her companion, so much so, indeed, that in her prettily confidential way she had told him all about how Archie and she became acquainted, how they grew to love each other, how Archie proposed and was accepted, and how surprised they all were afterwards to find that he was a baronet’s son. Then she went on to tell him of Archie’s letter to his father, the first result of which was Colonel Woodruffe’s visit at the vicarage.
‘Well, and what happened after the colonel’s visit?’ continued Mr Etheridge.