Presently he came upon her seated on a mossy bank, her closed sketch-book on her knee. She was not working, but, with the end of her pencil at her parted lips, she sat watching Lionel, whom he could see plucking flowers and colored leaves not far away.
“Now, don't go any farther, darling boy!” he heard her call out, in tones the mellow sweetness of which shot through him like a delectable pain. “You might wander away, and then mother's boy would be lost.”
Sheltered from her view by hanging vines and the lowering branches of a beech-tree, Galt peered out at her. How could he have been so blinded?—so densely unappreciative of her? Where in all his experience had he known a creature so beautiful in soul, mind, and body? And yet he had thrown her down and trampled on her and left her covered with the mire and slime of his own making. He smothered a groan of blended self-contempt and despair. Her mother had doubted his ever regaining her regard, and Mrs. Barry knew her best. The girl had been at his mercy once, and he had not hesitated to strike; now she had the upper hand. What would she do? How would she receive his proposal?—what would she say? Would her soulful eyes blaze under the fires of just retaliation? Would her magnetic voice ring with the contempt she must so long have felt?
Noiselessly treading the dank, green moss which lay between him and her, he was close to her before she was aware of his presence. Then she glanced up and saw him; there was a fluttering, shrinking look in her long-lashed eyes, in which he read the hurried hope that the meeting was purely accidental; to his horror, he also read in the simple act of reaching for her hat, which lay by her side, that she intended to avoid any sort of intercourse with him.
With the agony of this fear sounding in his voice, he cried, imploringly: “Please don't run away! I have been to your house to see you; your mother told me you were here.”
“But she wouldn't,” Dora said, pale and surprised. “She knows that I don't want to—to meet any one here. It isn't fair, Kenneth—you know it isn't! It is taking a mean, low advantage of me, after all that has happened. It is cowardly, and I won't stand it. You will leave me instantly, or I shall go!”
“God forgive me, you are right, Dora!” he cried, in dismay. “But there is something I must say, and even your mother thought I might venture to see you.”