She said good-bye to Charles and thought him
foolish not to offer to accompany her. She said, 'It's a very long way
to Sales Hall,' and he answered, 'Oh, you'll meet that man somewhere,
potting at rabbits.'
'Do you think so? I hope he won't shoot me.' And she saw herself
stretched on the ground, wounded, dying, with just enough force to
utter words he could never forget--words that would change his whole
life. She was willing to sacrifice herself and she said good-bye to
Charles again, and sorrowfully, as though she were already dead. She
tried to plan her dying words, but as she could not hit on
satisfactory ones, she contented herself with deciding that whether
she were wounded or not, she would try to introduce the subject of
Aunt Rose; and as she went she looked out hopefully for a tall figure
with a gun under its arm.
She met it, but without a gun, on the track where, on one side, the
trees stood in fresh green, like banners, and on the other the meadows
sloped roughly to the distant water. He had been watching for her, he
said, and suddenly over her assurance there swept a wave of
embarrassment, of shyness. She was alone with him and he was not like
Charles Batty. He looked down at her with amusement in his blue,
thick-lashed eyes, and it was difficult to believe that here was the
hero, or the villain, of the piece. She felt the sensation she had
known when he handed her the orchid, and she blushed absurdly when he
actually said, as though he read her thoughts, 'No orchids to-day?'
'No.
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