“We lock the big gate at dusk when his lordship’s away. But you come round at nine o’clock to the postern by the dovecot, and I’ll let you in.”
The hill garden’s mood was suited to the full moon. Eve had dreamt of such enchantments, but had never seen them till that summer night. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the cypresses and cedars were like the black spires of a city. The alleys and walks were tunnels of gloom. Here and there a statue or a fountain glimmered, and the great water cisterns were pools of ink reflecting the huge white disc of the moon.
Eve wandered to and fro along the moonlit walks and up and down the dim stairways. The stillness was broken only by the splash of water, and by the turret clock striking the quarters.
It was the night of her last day at Latimer. She would be sorry to leave it, and yet, to-morrow she would be at Fernhill. Lynette’s glowing head flashed into her thoughts, and a rush of tenderness overtook her. If life could be like the joyous eyes of the child, if passion went no further, if all problems remained at the age of seven!
How would Canterton like the pictures she had painted? A thrill went through her, and at the same time she felt that the garden was growing cold. A sense of unrest ruffled the calm of the moonlit night. She felt near to some big, indefinable force, on the edge of the sea, vaguely afraid of she knew not what.
She would see him to-morrow. It was to be the day of the Fernhill garden party, and she had promised Lynette that she would go.
She felt glad, yet troubled, half tempted to shirk the affair, and to stay with her mother at Orchards Corner.
A week had passed, and she could not escape from the knowledge that something had happened to her in that week.
Yet what an absurd drift of dreams was this that she was suffering. The moonlight and the mystery were making her morbid and hypersensitive.
To-morrow she would walk out into the sunlight and meet him face to face in the thick of a casual crowd. All the web of self-consciousness would fall away. She would find herself talking to a big, brown-faced man with steady eyes and a steady head. He was proof against such imaginings, far too strong to let such fancies cloud his consciousness.