It was yet quite early in the morning, and high on the Hog’s Back, that ridge of the Surrey Hills that runs from Farnham towards Guildford, the gentle coolness of daybreak had not left the air.
Roddy and Elma had met for an early morning walk, she being again alone at the Towers. They had been walking across the fields and woods for an hour, and were now high up upon the hill which on one side gave views far away to the misty valley of the Thames, and on the other to Hindhead and the South Downs. The hill rose steep and sombre, its sides dark with chestnut woods, and all about them the fields were golden with the harvest.
They were tired with their walk, so they threw themselves down upon the grassy hillside and gazed away across the wide vista of hills and woodlands.
“How glorious it is!” declared the girl, looking fresh and sweet in a white frock and wide-brimmed summer hat trimmed with a saxe-blue scarf.
“Delightful! This walk is worth getting up early to take!” he remarked with soft love laughter, looking into her wonderful eyes that at the moment were fixed in fascination upon the scene.
Since that day months ago when he had declared his affection, he had never spoken directly of love, but only uttered it in those divers ways and words, those charms of touch and elegance of grace which are love’s subtlest, truest, and most perilous language.
Slowly, as she turned her beautiful eyes to his, he took her soft little hand, raising it gallantly to his lips.
“Elma,” he said after a long silence, “I have brought you here to tell you something—something that perhaps I ought to leave unsaid.”
“What?” she asked with sudden interest, her eyes opening widely.
“I want to say that I dislike your friend Mr Rutherford,” he blurted forth.