“It is horrible having to go alone. I do not like it at all,” said Isoline.
“I will go as far to meet you as I dare. Don’t fail me, dear,—but I know you won’t.”
“You really talk of it as though it were settled,” said she. Though she spoke in this way, she knew in her inmost heart that her mind was made up, but not for the world would she have admitted it to her lover, even when the admission was to save her a tiresome walk on the morrow. She liked to exact the last farthing that she considered due to herself. She did not look happy as she retraced her steps, and, though it might be said that her troubles were righting themselves, she was not so, entirely. She was giving up what had been one of her dearest dreams.
There would be no wedding—at least none in the sense in which it appealed to her—no toilette, no bridesmaids envious of her importance, no favours, no grey horses, none of the flourish and circumstance with which she had pictured herself entering married life. She could not have foreseen herself dispensing with it, but then, neither could she have foreseen the malign chance which had revealed Rhys Walters to the man with the dark lantern. The horror of that discovery was never long out of her mind.
It was clear from what the newspapers had said that he was in communication with some one, and, while she and Harry delayed their marriage, every day brought its fresh possibility that Walters might hear a rumour of her engagement. Little as she knew of the deep places of human souls, she had seen, when they parted, that he was desperate, and a sort of dread had come to her of the power she had let loose; since the revelation of his name and character he had become a nightmare. She repented bitterly of her vanity, or, at least, of the toils into which her vanity had led her.
At night she would wake and imagine him lying in wait behind some tree to murder her, like the determined and forsaken heroes of romances she had read. Such things had happened before. Once she was married and clear of Crishowell she would be safe; but she was to pay for the hours in which she had sunned herself in his admiration with the glory that should have been hers as a bride.
Next morning while Harry, at Waterchurch, was loitering about, chained to the vicinity of the stable-clock, she was walking briskly along the road with a stone in her muff.
[CHAPTER XXXIV
THE PURSUERS]
IT was a quiet week which followed at Waterchurch, and when Harry set off to London on business which he refused to talk about, and which he vaguely referred to as connected with his lawyer, Mr. Fenton bade him good-bye amiably enough. His son had neither contradicted him nor re-opened the subject of his marriage, and the Squire, with whom put off was done with, regained his composure and returned to his own affairs. He told his wife nothing, for he had lost his temper and did not wish her to find it out.