Suddenly, “Damme, Sir Robert,” Flixton cried, “there is the little beauty—hem!—there she is, I think. With your permission I think I’ll join her.”
“By all means, by all means,” Sir Robert answered indulgently. “You need not stand on ceremony.”
Flixton waited for no more. Perhaps he had no mind to be bored, now that he had gained what he wanted. He hurried after the slim figure with the white floating skirts and the Leghorn hat, which had descended the steps of the house, moved lightly across the lawns—and vanished. He guessed, however, whither she was bound. He knew that she had a liking for walking in the wilderness behind the house; a beech wood which was already beginning to put on its autumn glory. And sure enough, hastening to a point among the smooth grey trunks where three paths met, he discerned her a hundred paces away, walking slowly from him with her eyes raised.
“Squirrels!” Flixton thought. And he made up his mind to bring the terriers and have a hunt on the following Sunday afternoon. In the meantime he had another quarry in view, and he made after the white-gowned figure.
She heard his tread on the carpet of dry beech leaves, and she turned and saw him. She had come out on purpose that she might be alone, at liberty to think at her ease and orientate herself, in relation to her new environment, and the fresh and astonishing views which were continually opening before her. Or, perhaps, that was but her pretext: an easy explanation of silence and solitude, which might suffice for her father and possibly for Miss Sibson. For, for certain, amid sombre thoughts of her mother, she thought more often and more sombrely in these days of another; of happiness which had been forfeited by her own act; of weakness, and cowardice, and ingratitude; of a man’s head that stooped to her adorably, and then again of a man’s eyes that burned her with contempt.
It is probable, therefore, that she was not overjoyed when she saw Mr. Flixton. But Sir Robert was so far right in his estimate of her nature that she hated to give pain. It was there, perhaps, that she was weak. And so, seeing the Honourable Bob, she smiled pleasantly on him.
“You have discovered a favourite haunt of mine,” she said. She did not add that she spent a few minutes of every day there: that the smooth beech-trunks knew the touch of her burning cheeks, and the rustle of the falling leaves the whisper of her penitence. Daily she returned by way of the Kennel Path and there breathed a prayer for her mother, where a mother’s arms had first enfolded her, and a mother’s kisses won her love. What she did add was, “I often come here.”