I caught sight of him long before he discovered me, and could make my notes upon him. I could even make my notes upon myself, not wholly with my own approval. I was too business-like, too cool. There was nothing I possessed in the world that I would not have given for a single quickened heart-throb. I would have given it the more when I saw Hugh's pinched face and the furbished-up spring suit he had worn the year before.
It was not the fact that he had worn it the year before that gave me a pang; it was that he must have worn it pretty steadily. I am not observant of men's clothes. Except that I like to see them neat, they are too much alike to be worth noticing. But anything not plainly opulent in Hugh smote me with a sense of guilt. It could so easily be attributed to my fault. I could so easily take it so myself. I did take it so myself. I said as he approached: "This man has suffered. He has suffered on my account. All my life must be given to making it up to him."
I make no attempt to tell how we met. It was much as we had met after other separations, except that when he slipped to the low boulder and took me in his arms it was with a certainty of possession which had never hitherto belonged to him. There was nothing for me but to let myself go, and lie back in his embrace.
I came to myself, as it were, on hearing him whisper, with his face close to mine:
"You witch! You witch! How did you ever manage it?"
I made the necessity for giving him an explanation the excuse for working myself free.
"I didn't manage it. It was Mrs. Brokenshire."
"Yes, Hugh. It was she. She asked him. She must have begged him. That's all I can tell you about it."
"Then it must have been on your account rather than on mine; you can bet your sweet life on that!"
"Hugh, darling, she's fond of you. She's fond of you all. If you could only have--"
"We couldn't." For the first time he showed signs of admitting me into the family sense of disgrace. "Did you ever hear how dad came to marry her?"
I said that something had reached me, but one couldn't put the blame for that on her.
"And she's had more pull with him than we've had," he declared, resentfully. "You can see that by the way he's given in to her on this--"