People are different, as has been remarked. There was nobody in the world that could have put the question to Wych Hazel as he put it, and afterwards she could recognize that. Mr. Falkirk's words would have been more anxious; Dr. Maryland's would have been more astonished; and any one of Miss Hazel's admirers would have made speeches of surprise and sympathy and offered service. Rollo's was a business question, albeit in its somewhat curt accentuation there lurked a certain readiness for action; and there was besides, though indefinably expressed, the assumption of a right to know and a very intimate personal concern in the answer. How his eyes were looking at her the moonlight did not serve to shew; they were in shadow; yet even that was not quite hid from the object of them; and the arm that was round her was there, not in freedom-taking, but with the unmistakeable expression of shelter. So he stood and asked her what had happened.
'Thank you,' she said in the same measured tone. 'I am not cold--I think. But it is safe now. Will you walk home very fast, please? I promised Mr. Falkirk that I would be home by eleven!'--There was an accent of real distress then.
'Do you know what o'clock it is now?' said Rollo, drawing out his watch.
'I hoped--a while ago--it was near morning.'
He did not say what time it was. He put the little hand on his arm, guided Hazel into the road, and began his walk homeward, but with a measured quiet pace, not 'very fast.'
'Why did you wish it was morning?' he asked in the same way in which he had spoken before. No haste in it; calm business and self-possession; along with the other indications above mentioned. It was cool, but it was the coolness of a man intensely alive to the work in hand; the intonation towards Wych Hazel very gentle.
'I thought I had to walk home alone,' she said simply. 'And I wanted the time to come.'
'Please tell me the meaning of all this. You went to Merricksdale this evening--last evening?'
Rollo added no more questions then. He went steadily on, keeping a gentle pace that Wych Hazel could easily bear, until they came to the long grey stone house where she had once run in from the storm. At the gate Rollo paused and opened it, leading his companion up to the door.