‘I know you did,’ I replied, tightening my hold of her hands, while she made feeble efforts to get away; ‘and I wish my tongue had been cut out before I could have insulted you and her like that. Forgive me, Rachel; I have been punished enough.’
‘I cannot,’ she answered, still panting with her excitement. ‘I should be ashamed of myself if I could take a man who had even thought of me like that.’
Two tears began to trickle from her eyes, and a little hysterical catch in her breath betrayed to me that her defiant courage was failing her. I would not let her go. Love and shame and a resentful disappointment made me a little savage too.
‘I never did think of you like that,’ I said sternly; ‘and you know it. I must hold you till I clear myself—I cannot bear it’——
A log tumbled in the grate, and Don woke up. She caught away her hands and sped out of the room; and I walked through a French window into the cool summer night, too full of wrath and love to speak to anybody.
This was how we stood when at last (on Saturday, the 18th of December) the true Christmas weather came, and we found ourselves in the hot afternoon alone on the croquet-lawn—alone for the first time since my stormy wooing was interrupted. Don being still busy in the sheep-yards and shearing-shed, I had been playing singly against Lizzie and her; and now Lizzie had been called away to the nursery to consult with a needlewoman who was at work there. We were both anxious (though for very different reasons) to leave off playing when our chaperon had departed; but it was not easy to do so in the middle of a game, especially as she had instructed her partner to play for both of them until she returned. So we knocked the balls about for a few minutes in embarrassed silence, and then had an altercation as to which hoop Lizzie had been through; and then we both got a little huffy, and played, first with indifference, and then with a malicious energy, which resulted at last in my sending her partner’s ball into the thickest Portugal laurels in the shrubbery.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon!’ I exclaimed with compunction, as she solemnly marched off to look for it. ‘Let me find it for you.’
‘Do not trouble yourself,’ she replied sharply; and immediately dashed in between the laurel and a very prickly rose-bush, whose long sprays caught her muslin dress and tore it. I saw her straw-hat amongst the big dark branches, and her little hand searching under them for a moment or two; then she started up suddenly with a quick cry, and bounded into the path again.
‘What is the matter? Have you hurt yourself,’ I asked anxiously.
Her hat fell to the ground, and she stood before me with the blazing sun on her pretty head, and a wide-eyed horror in her face. ‘Wait a minute for me!’ she panted breathlessly; ‘I want you to help me—I have been bitten.’ Before I could collect my senses to understand what she meant, she had sped like a flash of light into the house; and dashing into the laurel bush, I saw what had happened. A big black snake was gliding away from the spot where she had been kneeling.