Over
everything there was a suggestion of enchantment: lovers, strolling
by, were romantic in their silence; a faint hoot from some steamer was
like a laugh.
'It will be dark over there, won't it?' Henrietta asked.
'Frightfully. We'll cut across the fields.'
'Not to Sales Hall?'
'Sales Hall? What for? To see that miserable fellow? We're not going
near Sales Hall.'
She breathed a word.
'What did you say?' he asked.
'Cows,' she breathed again.
'Perhaps.'
'But in the winter,' she said hopefully, 'I should think they shut
them up at night, poor things.'
'Not cold enough yet for that.'
'I'm afraid of them, you know.'
'Domestic animals,' he said calmly.
'Horns,' she whispered.
They said no more. Their path edged those woods which in their turn
edged the gorge; but here and there the trees spread themselves more
freely and, through the darkness, Henrietta had glimpses of furtive
little paths, of dips and hollows. A small pool, thick with early
fallen leaves, had hardly a foot of gleaming surface with which to
gaze like an unwinking eye at the emerging stars. But this skirting of
the wood came to an end and there stretched before their feet, which
made the only sound in the quiet night, a broad white road where the
arched gateway of a distant house looked like the fragment of a
temple.
'I like this,' Henrietta said; 'I feel safe.'
'Not for long,' Charles replied sternly. He opened a gate and through
a little coppice they reached a fence.
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