Part 5 (1/2)
”I did go home, but could not stay long; I had business in Ireland that could not be neglected.”
”Business?” she repeats wonderingly.
”Yes,” he says gravely--”important business; it may keep me here for some time yet.”
She listens in surprise, but she is too proud to ask him what his business may be. Perhaps he would not tell her if she did; but he is nothing to her--less than nothing. Why should she trouble about his affairs?
”What have you been doing to yourself, Honor?” They have come to the narrow wire fence that separates the rectory lawn from the rectory paddock. ”You are as pale as a ghost. Have you been fretting?”
For an instant she looks at him coldly, almost angrily; then the tears come into her eyes. Something in his voice, in the way he is looking down at her, in the touch of his hand, as he lays it over hers for an instant, has gone straight to her heart.
”I am not very happy certainly; it is an anxious time for us all just now.”
”Yes,” he says, pretending not to see her tears, ”and it is lonely at Donaghmore; but you are not so unprotected as you appear to be. There are those on the watch who would gladly die to s.h.i.+eld you from danger.”
”I used to think so,” she answers sadly, ”but I am not so sure of it now.”
”But you may be sure of it, Honor--I will answer for that myself.”
She smiles as she listens to him. What should this Englishman know of the feelings of the people? He means to be kind of course; but his words carry no comfort--how should they? Looking at him as he stands before her, she cannot but own that, if his face is proud and a trifle cold in its repose, there is something true and winsome in it. The keen eyes meet hers unflinchingly, the firm lips under the heavy moustache have not a harsh curve about them; it is a face with power in it, and some tenderness and pa.s.sion too, under all its chill composure.
”He has the look of a man one might trust through everything,” she says to herself almost with a sigh; and then she turns to go back to her friends, angry that he should have won so much thought from her.
”Don't go yet, Honor; it's cooler here than among all those chattering women; and if you want any tea, I can bring you some.”
The suns.h.i.+ne is beating fiercely down upon the groups scattered over the center of the lawn; but here under the trees the gra.s.s is flecked with cool shadows, and the two catch the breeze--such as it is--that comes from the river.
”I don't care for any tea, thanks; but I do enjoy this shade,” she says almost reluctantly; and still indifferent to a degree that might be called rude, she lets him find a seat on the low bough of one of the ash-trees, well out of reach of the suns.h.i.+ne.
He does not offer to sit down beside her, though there is plenty of room.
With his shoulder against a tree and his hat well pulled over his eyes he stands and talks in his easy, half-grave, half-mocking way, that, in spite of herself, the girl finds charming.
He does not appear to be in the least anxious to interest or amuse her; yet he does both. Before long she is laughing as she has not laughed for weeks--a pretty color has come into her cheeks, her eyes are sparkling. No wonder the man looking at her feels his heart thrill!
If ever he thought that he could go away and leave this willful Irish girl, whose very willfulness has caught and chained him, he knows now that the thought was a vain one.
She is the one woman in the world for him, her love the one thing needful to crown his life. Other women may be fairer, other women may be ready to give him love where this girl gives him but a mocking tolerance; but no other woman can ever be to him what she is.
Of love and lovers there is no thought in Honor's head this sunny afternoon. She thinks her cousin has improved, that he has even grown quite tolerable, and there it ends, so far as she is concerned.
On their way back to the house they pa.s.s Launce and Mrs. Dundas walking very close together, and talking seriously.
Honor looks at her coldly. She does not like the woman. Her bold eyes, her lithe figure, in its French-cut gown, the very grace and _chic_ that have made Kate Dundas the belle of the county jar upon Honor.
”I am very sorry Launce has gone so far in that quarter,” her companion says, when they are well out of ear-shot. ”These fascinating women are always more or less dangerous.”
”Oh, Launce can take care of himself!”
”I doubt it,” Brian answered dryly.