Part 57 (1/2)
Dinah gave a sudden sharp s.h.i.+ver, and pulled her coat closer about her.
He glanced at her again. ”You'll like it better than being a maid-of-all-work,” he said, with his swift, transforming smile.
She smiled back at him with ready responsiveness. ”Oh, I shall! I'm sure I shall. I've always wanted to be married--always. Only--it'll seem a little funny, just at first. You won't get impatient with me, will you, if--if sometimes I forget how to behave?”
He laughed and abruptly slackened speed. They were running down a narrow lane bordered with bare trees through which the spring suns.h.i.+ne filtered down. On a brown upland to one side of them a plough was being driven.
On the other the ground sloped away to deep meadows where wound a willow-banked river.
The car stopped. ”How pretty it is!” said Dinah.
And then very suddenly she found that it was not for the sake of the view that he had brought her to a standstill in that secluded place. For he caught her to him with the hot ardour she had learned to dread and kissed with pa.s.sion the burning face she sought to hide.
She struggled for a few seconds like a captured bird, but in the end she yielded palpitating, as she had yielded so often before, mutely bearing that which her whole soul clamoured inarticulately to escape. When he let her go, her cheeks were on fire. He was laughing, but she was on the verge of tears.
He started on again without words, and in a very brief s.p.a.ce they were racing forward at terrific speed, seeming scarcely to touch the ground so rapid was their progress.
Dinah sat with her two hands clutched upon her hat, thankful for the cold rush of air that gave her relief after the fiery intensity of those unsparing kisses. Her heart was beating in great thumps. Somehow the fierceness of him always exceeded either memory or expectation. He was so terribly strong, so disconcertingly absolute in his demands upon her. And every time he seemed to take more.
She hardly noticed anything further of the country through which they pa.s.sed. Her agitation possessed her overwhelmingly. She felt exhausted, unnerved, very curiously ashamed. It was good to have so princely a lover, but his tempestuous wooing was altogether too much for her. She wondered how Rose, the sedate and composed beauty, would have met those wild gusts of pa.s.sion. They would not have disconcerted her; nothing ever did. She would probably have endured all with a smile. No form of adoration could come amiss with her. She did not fancy that Rose's heart was capable of beating at more than the usual speed. Her very blushes savoured of a delicate complacency that enhanced her beauty without disturbing her serenity. A great wave of envy went through Dinah. ”Ah, why had she not been blessed with such a temperament as that?”
His voice broke in upon her disjointed meditations. ”Well, Daphne?
Feeling better?”
She glanced at him with the confused consciousness that she dared not meet his eyes. She was glad that he was laughing, but the turbulent feeling of uncertainty that his nearness always brought to her was with her still. She was as one who had pa.s.sed by a raging fire, and the scorching heat of the flame yet remained with her. Breathlessly she spoke. ”I can't think--or do anything--in this wind. Are we nearly there?”
”We are there,” he made answer.
And she discovered that which in her distress of mind she had failed to notice. They were running smoothly along a private avenue of fir-trees towards an old stone mansion that stood on a slope overlooking the long river valley.
She drew a hard breath. ”But this is better--ever so much--than the Court!” she said.
”Your future home, my queen!” said Sir Eustace royally.
She breathed again deeply, wonderingly. ”Is it real?” she said.
He laughed. ”I almost think so. You see that other house right away in the distance, across that further slope? That is the Dower House where Isabel and Scott are to live when we are married.”
”Oh!” There was a quick note of disappointment in Dinah's voice. ”I thought they would live with us.”
”I don't know why,” said Sir Eustace with a touch of sharpness, and then softening almost immediately, ”It's practically the same thing, my sprite of the woods. But I wish you to be mistress in your own home--when we do settle down, which won't be at present. For we're not coming back from our honeymoon till you have learnt that I am the only person in the world that matters.”
Again a slight s.h.i.+ver caught Dinah, but she repressed it instantly. ”I expect it won't take me very long to learn that, Apollo,” she said, with her shy, fleeting smile.
And then they glided up to the wide steps of his home and the door opened to receive them, showing Scott--Scott her friend--standing in the opening, awaiting her.
CHAPTER V
THE WATCHER