“I think you are right,” he said, slowly.
Jilian still played with her handkerchief, and appeared tormented by the conflicting emotions in her heart. It was proper for her to display some tenderness towards her betrothed, yet she was in mortal fear of the disease that might be lurking in his very breath.
“Richard, mon cher, if anything should happen, I—I will come and nurse you.”
Jeffray reddened and looked somewhat ashamed.
“I could not let you imperil yourself,” he retorted, with much feeling.
Miss Hardacre wavered, and held out her hands to him pathetically. She was sorry for the lad, and yet her terror overcame her pity.
“Go home, Richard,” she said. “No, you must not kiss me. It may be nothing but a fear, but—I am afraid of you to-day.”
And Jeffray, feeling strangely humbled, bowed and left her on the terrace.
The sense of feverishness increased on Richard as he rode homeward through wild, alluring Pevensel. The blood was drumming in his brain; his eyes were hot, his mouth parched and dry with the March wind and the dust. Even the motion of his horse made him sweat, and there was a dull ache across his loins. How different his mood from that which had torched him through the wilds but yesterday!
The forest itself seemed to grow full of fantasies before him, like some weird etching of Albrecht Durer’s. The trees towered, waxing grotesque and even threatening as they poured down in places upon the road. The mutterings of the wind were intensified in his ears, the lights and shadows of the landscape exaggerated. Continually he fancied that he saw a figure in a red cloak flitting amid the crowded trunks of the trees. The feverish thought haunted him that Bess was flying to Rodenham for fear of Dan. What if he had had the fever in his blood and had given it to the girl in the abbey yesterday? The thought of her proud and handsome face scarred by the ravages of disease made him shiver and feel cold at the heart. Poor Jilian also might take it from him, nor did he wonder that she had shrunk away in fear.