"And you do not quite refuse?" said he.
She hesitated for a moment or two.
"I must think for you as well as for myself," she said, in a scarcely audible voice. "Give me time. Give me till the end of the week."
"At this hour I will come."
"And you will believe I have decided for the best—that I have tried hard to be fair to you as well as myself?"
"I know you are too true a woman for anything else," he said; and then he added, "Ah, well, now, you have had enough misery for one morning; you must dry your eyes now, and we will go out into the garden; and if I am not to say anything of all my gratitude to you—why? Because I hope there will be many a year to do that in, my angel of goodness!"
She went to fetch a light shawl and a hat; he kept turning over the things on the table, his fingers trembling, his eyes seeing nothing. If they did see anything, it was a vision of the brown moors near Castle Dare, and a beautiful creature, clad all in cream-color and scarlet, drawing near the great gray stone house.
She came into the room again; joy leaped to his eyes.
"Will you follow me?"
There was a strangely subdued air about her manner as she led him to where her father was; perhaps she was rather tired after the varied emotions she had experienced; perhaps she was still anxious. He was not anxious. It was in a glad way that he addressed the old gentleman who stood there with a spade in his hand.