But by this time Radnor was out of hearing, his cheeks flaming with indignation, his teeth set fiercely together, his fingers tightly pressed against his palms.
So he had been a puppet in the hands of the scheming Camilla. “A very docile and obedient little puppet,” as he told himself, for he had gone and done the very thing expected of him.
As he would have scorned and loathed another man who would have deliberately lent himself to such a scheme, he now scorned and loathed himself, all innocent as he was. And his cousin Camilla? He felt that he could not bring himself even to see her again.
The common talk of the house, forsooth! Aye, this was easily believable, for had he not heard it with his own ears from the very nursemaids? The Bournie pride rose tumultuously in Radnor’s breast. He wanted to get away from Lorimac, from men and women, from himself, from everything that could remind him of his humiliation.
His walk had now brought him to the fence which separated the hotel grounds from the forest adjoining. Placing his hands on the topmost rail Radnor vaulted lightly over and plunged into the underbrush, taking a certain sort of satisfaction in trampling down the low bushes that lay in his path.
For an hour he roamed on, by some instinct always holding the lake in view. It seemed that he must keep in motion or be overwhelmed by the wild, maddening thoughts that were surging through his brain.
He could liken himself only to Tantalus, about to drink of the life giving draught, to have it dashed from his very lips. But in his own case another cup had been substituted—a cup so bitter and revolting that, strong man as he was, he shuddered at the realization of its existence.
When or why he turned around he knew not, but presently he found himself approaching the hotel again. As soon as he caught sight of its outlines he paused, half determined to strike off into the deeper woods. And at that instant he heard his name called.
It was his cousin Camilla. She had been out looking for him, and now came forward, keen anxiety on her face and in her voice, as she exclaimed: “My dear Radnor, what has come over you? I have been really concerned about you. Here it is almost ten and you have not been to breakfast yet. A maid said you had come into the woods, and you can imagine how eager I was to find you when I ventured here myself.”
She held up her gown, to the trimming of which a many forked twig had fastened itself, shaking it at him suggestively. But he neither answered her smile with another, nor made any motion to disengage the dress. His face took on a hard, stern look Camilla had never seen on it before, and if Radnor had not been too fully preoccupied to notice it he would have been interested in observing the fading out of the smile on hers and the creeping into its place of a strange expression of commingled fear and defiance.