Thus speaking, Ike slunk off; and the Parson, with scowling brows, proceeded to Nelly's favourite haunt by the sea-shore.
What a bright fresh morning it had been, when he heard the lark singing on Exmoor a few short hours ago? Was it the gathering thunder-storm that made the sky so dark, the air so stifling, now?
A woman's tact seldom fails her at need. Mistress Nelly's greeting was just sufficiently cordial to soothe the Parson into decent behaviour, without exceeding the limits of such kindly reception as seemed due to her grandfather's friend. Ere John Garnet had ceased wondering what there was in this new comer to move her so much, she had cleared her brows, steadied her voice, and extended her hand with a pleasant smile. At that moment, perhaps, the Parson knew for the first time, by the jealousy she was capable of arousing, how fiercely he loved her. And it may have been at the same moment that John Garnet discovered something he had never realised before.
An ass between two bundles of hay has always been accepted as the illustration of a false position. Surely a young lady with an admirer on each hand, one of whom she knows she hates, while the other she dreads to acknowledge she is beginning to like, must be equally at a loss on which side to incline. What is she to say or leave unsaid? What is she to do or leave undone? Nelly Carew wished John Garnet had never come, wished he would go away; wished a spring-tide would flow in that moment, and float the Parson bodily up to Bossington Point, down to Barnstaple Bay, out into the wide Atlantic, where she might never set eyes on him again! Succour came when most she wanted it. A few heavy drops, a gust of wind, a flash, and a thunder-roll. In five minutes it was obvious that unless they hastened back to the village, all three would be drenched to the skin. With an imploring look at John Garnet, she made him understand he was to leave her without asking why. How delightful it was to feel that he caught her meaning at once, and obeyed! Then she hurried the Parson to her grandfather's cottage, at a pace that admitted of no explanation; and once over the threshold disappeared in her own chamber, with that plea of headache (thunder always gave her a headache) which must have been Eve's excuse when she did not want to work in the garden with Adam.