CHAPTER VII
MY LADY RAGES
I was shaken quite out of my exultation. I stood raging at myself in a defiant scorn, struck dumb at the folly that will let a man who loves one woman go sweethearting with another. Her eyes stabbed me, the while I stood there dogged yet grovelling, no word coming to my dry lips. What was there to be said? The tie that bound me to Aileen was indefinable, tenuous, not to be phrased; yet none the less it existed. I stood convicted, for I had tacitly given her to understand that no woman found place in my mind save her, and at the first chance she found another in my arms. Like a detected schoolboy in presence of the rod I awaited my sentence, my heart a trip-hammer, my face a picture of chagrin and dread.
For just a moment she held me in the balance with that dreadful smile on her face, my day of judgment come to earth, then turned and away without a word. I flung wildly after her, intent on explaining what could not be explained. In the night I lost her and went up and down through the shrubbery calling her to come forth, beating the currant and gooseberry bushes in search of her. A shadow flitted past me toward the house, and at the gate I intercepted the girl. Better I had let her alone. My heart misgave me at sight of her face; indeed the whole sweep of her lithesome reedy figure was pregnant with Highland scorn and pride.
“Oh, Aileen, in the arbour——” I was beginning, when she cut me short.
“And I am thinking I owe you an apology for my intrusion. In troth, Mr. Montagu, my interruption of your love-makings was not intentional.”
Her voice gave me the feel of being drenched with ice-water.
“If you will let me explain, Aileen——”
“Indeed, and there iss nothing to explain, sir. It will be none of my business who you are loving, and— Will you open the gate, Mr. Montagu?”