The short interlude had impressed her. But in imagination she saw, not the splendid figure that had crashed over the hedge down yonder,--but another, one silently haunting the dim pastures where he had ridden once, sweeping out of the dusk, and passing into the dusk again. The swift scene came back to her, with its wild rush of life, hounds, and horsemen,--only, instead of his cousin, she pictured Barnaby, to whose memory she had dedicated herself.
It was wearing late. Soon Lady Henrietta would interrupt herself, breaking off with a remorseful brusqueness, and order her off to bed. How quiet it was in the library, that vast, comfortable room! How safe she felt, and how sleepy, only dreaming, not thinking of anything.
The white fox-terrier with the bitten ear had stolen down to her and lay on her skirt. There was a kind of fellowship between her and the dog. When it jumped up all at once with a shiver she stroked its back softly, wondering why it alone was excited by the wind whistling outside the house. And it looked up in her face and scuttled like a thing possessed down the room.
"What's the matter with Kit?" said Lady Henrietta, pausing.--"I daresay she heard Macdonald shutting up in the hall."--And she went on talking.
Far down the room the heavy curtain swung hastily, and fell back. It was Susan who, without warning, lifted her eyes and saw somebody standing there.
He had walked right in out of the wind and rain, had flung off his dripping cap, but had not waited to unbutton his greatcoat; and he looked as he had looked in his picture, but no ghost--real,--with dreadful blue eyes, and a smiling mouth.
The girl started to her feet. One wild moment she stared at him. Her own cry sounded strange in her ears, very far off ... and then the world went round.
Slowly she drifted back into consciousness, and she was lying on her bed, surrounded by fluttered women, whose amazed whispering reached her like the dim clamour in a dream.
"Poor thing; poor thing--it was too much for her." "It was wicked of Mr. Barnaby to startle her like that. But how like him----!"
"Lord, Lord! his face as she lay on the floor!--and his mother rating him as if he'd never been dead an hour----!"
"'You've killed her!' said she. 'You've killed her!'"
