“No, it never could.... Please believe me and say no more. I can’t think what makes you wish it when you must have met so many much more fit.”
“But I have been waiting and hoping for you. And you must at any rate promise me to think it over for a few days before quite deciding. I have taken you by surprise. Think it over quietly, and we will talk about it some other day.”
“If I thought for years it would make no difference,” said Evereld.
“You fancy so, because like all young girls you have made a sort of ideal in your own mind, and no living man can come up to that ideal.”
“No, not an ideal,” she said softly, and into her eyes there stole the soft love light which revealed all too clearly her thoughts.
“She cares for some one else,” reflected Bruce Wylie, “I suppose it’s that confounded young Denmead. Well, silence is golden. She must be left till to-morrow to reflect.”
“Dear child,” he said in his mellow voice. “Don’t look so grave. I will say no more just at present. I only ask you to give what I have said your careful thought. Here we are at Triquent.”
Evereld drew out her watch, but in the worry of the previous evening, after her talk with Mr. Lewisham, she had forgotten to wind it up--the hands pointed to four o’clock.
“My watch has stopped,” she said, “but surely it is time we turned back! Finshauts seems much further than I expected.”
“Oh, we shall soon be there now,” said Bruce Wylie, glancing at the time. “It takes us some while to climb up, but we shall rattle down again at a great pace.”
It seemed a pity to have come so far and not after all to see the view of Mont Blanc, and though Evereld longed to be back with the others, and dreaded the _tête-à-tête_ with her companion after what had passed, she scarcely liked to say any more about returning.
She was grateful to him, moreover, because on the last stage of the journey he got out and walked beside the driver, leaving her to her great relief unmolested.
“He is a wonderfully kind man,” she reflected. “I hope I wasn’t too emphatic, but one had to make him quite understand. Even now we shall have to talk it over again. Oh dear! Oh dear! how I wish Ralph and I were really engaged, then one wouldn’t be so tongue-tied. I shall only be twenty in the spring, and there will still be a year to wait.”