"How can I, when you spend your entire time upbraiding me and accusing me of things of which I am innocent?"
"I neither accuse nor upbraid; I only say that----"
"Well, I don't think you can say much more,"--maliciously,--"because--I see Philip coming."
He has taken her hand, but now, stung by her words and her evident delight at Shadwell's proximity, flings it furiously from him.
"If so, it is time I went," he says, and turning abruptly from her, walks toward the corner that must conceal him from view.
A passing madness seizes Molly. Fully conscious that Luttrell is still within hearing, fatally conscious that it is within her power to wound him and gain a swift revenge for all the hard words she chooses to believe he has showered down on her, she sings,--slightly altering the ideas of the poet to suit her own taste,--she sings, as though to the approaching Philip:
"He is coming, my love, my sweet! Was it ever so airy a tread, My heart would know it and beat, Had it lain for a century dead."
She smiles coquettishly, and glances at Shadwell from under her long dark lashes. He is near enough to hear and understand; so is Luttrell. With a suppressed curse the latter grinds his heel into the innocent gravel and departs.
"Love is hurt with jar and fret, Love is made a vague regret, Eyes with idle tears are wet."
It is evening; the shadows are swiftly gathering. Already the dusk--sure herald of night--is here. Above in the trees the birds are crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their feathers on their night-perches.
How short the days have grown! Even into the very morning of sweet September there has fallen a breath of winter,--a chill, cold breath that tells us summer lies behind.
Luttrell, with downcast eyes and embittered heart, tramples through the same green wood (now, alas, fuller of fallen leaves) where first, at Herst, he and Molly re-met.
With a temperament as warm but less hopeful than hers, he sees the imaginary end that lies before him and his beloved. She has forsaken him, she is the bride of another,--that other is Shadwell. She is happy with him. This last thought, strange to say, is the unkindest cut of all.
He has within his hand a stout stick he took from a tree as he walked along; at this point of the proceeding he breaks it in two and flings it to one side. Happy! away from him, with perhaps only a jesting recollection of all the sweet words, the tender thoughts he has bestowed upon her! The thought is agony; and, if so, what will the reality be?