‘I am afraid we were sad cowards,’ said Ethel, when at last the dreaded passage had been effected, not very promptly or easily, for the narrow tree afforded but a sorry and unsteady foothold, and there was that in the recollection of the ghastly depth below, and the remembrance of the narrowness and slippery roundness of the crackling tree-trunk beneath the feet, that was not unlikely to affect feminine nerves. Yet, propped by Lord Harrogate’s arm, and encouraged by Lord Harrogate’s voice, with shut eyes and scarcely throbbing hearts, the two girls did manage to get across.
Then came the hasty traversing of the damp outer cave, the emerging into the fresh free air from what had seemed a grave closing its hungry jaws upon the living, and then the long walk through the brooding twilight to the north end of Heronmere, where, thanks to the trusty Betty’s winged feet, Farmer Fletcher’s green chaise was in readiness to receive the two half-fainting girls, and where at length Lord Harrogate, who had hitherto led Bay Middleton by the bridle, as he walked beside the rescued prisoners of the Hunger Hole, was able to spring again into the saddle.
To Betty Mudge, as Lord Harrogate laughingly declared when he had escorted his sister and her governess safely back to High Tor, where the warmest welcome awaited those for whom the neighbourhood was already in full search, the whole credit of the rescue was due. Betty it was who, mushroom-gathering on the moor, had espied the signal of distress, Ethel’s handkerchief, fluttering from the slender top of the hazel-tree that rose like a thin flagstaff above the rocks. Betty it was who, divining mischief where duller eyes might have seen nothing but a hazard or a frolicsome prank, had been making her way towards the Hunger Hole, when she caught sight of Lord Harrogate spurring across the moor in aimless quest of the missing ones. And if there could be faith put in the word of as worthy an Earl and as estimable a Countess as any in the peerage, the wind of adversity should never more be suffered to blow too bitingly, for Betty’s sake, on any of the Mudge family.
‘I shall ask Morford, as a particular favour, not to repair that bridge,’ said Lord Harrogate jestingly. ‘No chance then that the Hunger Hole should turn again into a trap for catching young ladies.’
CHAPTER XXX.—MAN PROPOSES.
‘Harrogate is going, you know, to leave us so very soon,’ Lady Maud De Vere had said, in her kindly matter-of-fact way, in the course of conversation with Ethel Gray; and Ethel had turned away her face instinctively, lest the burning blush which rose there unbidden should betray her secret to her pupil’s sister and her own friend. Poor Ethel had communed with her heart in the still hours of more than one night since the evening that had witnessed her release from the Hunger Hole, and she could not but acknowledge to herself that she loved Lord Harrogate.
It was not a welcome conviction that forced itself gradually upon Ethel Gray. The attachment, hopeless as it perforce was, was a thing to be deplored, a misfortune; not a source of joy. Lord Harrogate could be nothing to her. He was almost as remote from her humble sphere of life as a Prince of the blood-royal would have been. There are girls who know, where their own personal vanity is at stake, no distinction of ranks, and would set their caps without compunction at an Emperor. Ethel was none of these. To fall in love, even with an object as hopelessly out of reach as one of the fixed stars would be, is a forlorn privilege which has been claimed in every age by very humble persons of either sex. But to Ethel’s proud, maidenly heart it was pain, not pleasure, to know that the future Earl, the future master of High Tor, had grown to be dearer to her than was well for her peace of mind. That she was in his eyes merely Miss Gray, his sister’s governess, was to her thinking a certainty. And she did not even wish that it were otherwise. Why should there be two persons unhappy, on such a subject, instead of one? It was much better as it was. She had begun to love him before, in that desolate cavern on the moor, he had appeared as the harbinger of safety. But she had not admitted to herself that this was so, until the whirl of strong feelings consequent on the danger and the deliverance had taught her to read her own heart, and to learn that his image was garnered in its innermost core. And now he was going away, going very soon. Well, it was better so. A young man such as he was could not always be expected to linger in a country-house. He was going, and she should see him no more. Doubtless it was for the best.
She was in the garden, and alone. A governess is seldom alone. But lessons were over for the day; and Lady Alice her pupil was up-stairs finishing a sketch, and Ethel had strayed out into what, from some household tradition of a foreign florist who had been invoked, when Anne was Queen, to shape and stock the flower-beds and to trim the luxuriant holly-hedge into Netherlandish neatness, was called the Dutch garden. A pleasant spot it was, with its wealth of fragrant old-fashioned roses and gorgeous display of variegated tulips, screened by the immemorial holly-hedge from the rude north-east wind.
Quite suddenly, as she reached the other end of the holly-hedge, Ethel looked up at the rustle of the crisp green leaves, against which some one or something had brushed in passing, and her eyes met those of Lord Harrogate. The latter lifted his hat, but did not immediately speak, while Ethel neither spoke nor stirred. When the thoughts have been busy in conjuring up the image of a particular person, and the original of the air-drawn portrait appears, a kind of dreamy appreciativeness, which is of all sensations the most unlike to surprise, is apt to result. It was so in this case; and for a few brief instants Ethel looked at Lord Harrogate as she would have looked at his picture on the wall.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ said Lord Harrogate, dissolving the spell by the sound of his voice. ‘I hoped I should,’ he added, in a lower and more meaning tone. Ethel murmured something, stooping as she did so to lift the drooping tendril of a standard rose-tree beaten down by the heavy rain of yesterday. ‘Can you guess at all, Miss Gray,’ continued the young man, with an evident effort to speak carelessly and confidently, ‘why I wanted to find you here—and alone?’