Springing down again, she ran back to Jeffray, her red petticoat swinging about her slim, strong ankles.
“It is Dan,” she said, in a whisper, looking hard at Richard.
Richard’s smooth face grew wondrous grim for the moment.
“I am not afraid of your cousin, Bess,” he said.
“Ah, you do not know Dan; he has the temper of a devil.”
Richard was looking at her very earnestly.
“Perhaps you are right, Bess,” he answered. “There is no reason why we should betray our trysting-place to him. What shall you do?”
“Oh, I can hide and wait till Dan has gone. He will never suspect that I am here. And when—”
She hesitated, and swayed nearer to Richard as they walked towards his horse.
She smiled mysteriously and looked at Richard with the same alluring light shining in her eyes. How red and mischievous her lips looked! Jeffray conceived a great thirst for them, but hung back as though his honor shackled him. They were both a little shy of each other, looking long into each other’s eyes and breathing rapidly. Then they heard Dan’s voice calling to his dog, and Jeffray, mounting his horse, smiled at the girl and rode out from the ruins. Bess stood watching him with her bosom rising and falling and her face aglow.
Richard overtook Dan Grimshaw at the ford, and gave him “good-day” as he splashed through the water. The forester’s ugly face clouded as he recognized Jeffray. He touched his fur cap surlily, and appeared puzzled to know what business the Squire of Rodenham had in Pevensel. Jeffray, gathering that Bess was safe, pricked up his horse and took the path through the woods.
Shakespeare’s Romeo lost his reason in a night, and, however illogical the intoxications of youth may seem, they are of finer gold than the cold-tempered alloys of age.
Jeffray rode through the woods that evening, and heard the birds singing in the thickets, and saw the gloom creeping up over the mysterious hills, the gray sky cracking in the west to let through the red and molten lava of the setting sun. Thrush challenged thrush on many a glimmering spire, blackbirds piped it mellowly, linnets twittered in the gorse. Soon the plaintive chiding of the wryneck would be heard amid the meadows and the thickets. The wild woods seemed full of sound, of all the joyous outpourings of life, the massed chantings of the forest choristers. The gorse glimmered, wind-flowers shivered in the shade, the cuckoo-flower was unfolding its finials of lilac and white. Overhead the great trees breathed and murmured, tossing their hands to the setting sun.