"Not till you tell me how I have contrived to offend you," he answered, bluntly. "I called three times at the Vicarage last week. You would not see me; you were at home. I found that out, but you would not see me. The answer was the same each time, and now this afternoon you have done your best to avoid me. I want to know why."

His tone and his att.i.tude were alike uncompromising. I looked round in vain for some means of escape. It was not possible. After all this was no breach of my compact with the girl. I felt simply powerless.

"You have not offended me--not yet, at any rate," I said, with emphasis. "If you keep me standing here against my will another minute you most certainly will though. Please let me pa.s.s, I am in a hurry to get home."

"Very well, then, I will walk with you," he declared, standing on one side.

"There is no room," I remarked.

"We will see about that," he answered. He moved from in front of me, and then, leaving me the whole path, came crashing through the underwood and bracken by my side. I walked along swiftly, and he kept pace with me. After all he seemed to have nothing to say. We had almost reached the Rectory gate before he opened his mouth.

"Then you will not tell me why you have avoided me the last few days, Miss Ffolliot. What have I done to lose your good opinion?"

There was a curious earnestness in his tone. I felt my cheeks flush. I might perhaps have answered him in a different manner, but suddenly my eyes were riveted on a moving figure coming along the road into which we had stepped. I looked at it steadily. It was Olive Berdenstein, plodding along through the thick mud with careful, mincing footsteps, her long, loose cape and waving hat, easily distinguishable even at that distance. I stepped forward hastily, and before he could stop me, he pa.s.sed through the gate.

"Do not wait, please, Mr. Deville," I said, looking round at him. "There is a friend of yours coming round the lane. Go and meet her, and do not say anything about me."

He was very rude and very profane. He made use of an expression in connection with Olive Berdenstein which justified me in hurrying away.

I turned my back upon him and ran up the drive.

"Miss Ffolliot," he cried out, "one moment; I am very sorry. I apologize most abjectly."

I turned round and waved my hand. Anything to get rid of him.

"Very well! Go and meet Miss Berdenstein, please."

I am not at all sure that he did not repeat the offence. At any rate, he turned away, and a few moments later, from my bedroom window, I saw him greet her. They turned away together towards the path. I watched them with a little sigh.

CHAPTER XXIV

MY DILEMMA

It seemed to me during the days that followed that I was confronted with a problem of more than ordinary complexity. I at any rate found it so. To live through childhood and girlhood wholly unconscious of the existence of a living mother, and then to find her like this, with such a history, was altogether a bewildering and unrealizable thing. Was I unnatural that I had not fallen into her arms? Ought I to have heard her story with sympathy, or at least, with simulated sympathy? At any rate I had not erred on the side of kindness towards her! I had made her suffer, and suffer very bitterly. Yet was not that inevitable? The seed was of her own sowing, not of mine. I was her unconscious agent. The inevitable requital of offences against the laws of social order had risen up against her in my person. If I had pretended an affection which I certainly had not felt, I must have figured as a hypocrite--and she was not the woman to desire that. I liked her. I had been attracted towards her from the first. Doubtless that attraction, which was in itself intuitive, was due to the promptings of nature. In that case it would develop. It seemed to me that this offer of hers--to go to her with a definite post and definite duties would be the best of all opportunities for such development. I was strongly inclined to accept it. I was both lonely and unhappy. In a certain sense my education and long residence abroad had unfitted me for this sedentary (in a mental sense) and uneventful life. The events of the last few weeks had only increased my restlessness. There was something from which I desired almost frantically to escape, certain thoughts which I must do my utmost to drown. At all costs I desired to leave the place. Its environment had suddenly become stifling to me. The more I considered my mother's offer the more I felt inclined to accept it.

And accept it I did. Early one morning I walked down to the Yellow House, and in a very few words engaged myself as Mrs. Fortress's secretary. We were both of us careful, for opposite reasons, not to discuss the matter in any but a purely businesslike spirit. Yet she could not altogether conceal the satisfaction which my decision certainly gave her.

"I only hope that you will not find the life too monotonous," she said. "There is a good deal of hard work to be done, of course, and mine is not altogether interesting labor."

"Hard work is just what I want," I a.s.sured her. "It will be strange at first, of course, but I do not mind the monotony of it. I want to escape from my thoughts. I feel as though I had been living through a nightmare here."

She looked at me with a soft light in her eyes.

"Poor child!" she murmured, "poor child!"

I was afraid that she was going to ask me questions which I could not well have answered, so I rose to my feet and turned away. Yet there was something soothing in her evident sympathy. She walked to the door with me.

"When shall you be ready to go to London with me?" she asked, upon the threshold.

"Any time," I answered, promptly. "There is nothing I desire so much as to leave here."

"I will write to have my little place put in order to-day," she said. "It will be ready for us in a week, I dare say. I think that I too shall be glad to leave here."

I walked quietly home through the shadowy plantation and across the little stretch of common. On my way upstairs to my room Mary, our little housemaid, interrupted me.

"There is a young lady in the drawing room waiting to see you, miss,"

she announced; "she came directly after you went."

I retraced my steps slowly. Of course I knew who it was. I opened the door, and found her sitting close to the fire.

She rose at once to her feet, and looked at me a little defiantly. I greeted her as pleasantly as I could, but she was evidently in a bad humor. There was an awkward silence for a moment or two. I waited for her to explain her mission.

"I saw you with Mr. Deville the other day," she remarked at last.

I nodded.

"It is quite true. I did all that I could to avoid him. That was what I promised, you know."

"Is that the first time you have seen him since we made our arrangement?" she asked.

"The first time," I answered.

"You have not been with him this afternoon?" she asked, suspiciously.

"Certainly not," I a.s.sured her. "I have only been down to see Mrs. Fortress for a few minutes."

"He was not there?"

"No."

She sighed and looked away from me into the fire, and when she spoke her voice was thick with rising sobs.

"He does not care for me. I cannot make him! My money does not seem to make any difference. He is too fierce and independent. I don't think that I shall ever be able to make him care."

I looked steadily down upon the carpet, and set my teeth firmly. It was ridiculous that my heart should be beating so fiercely.

"I'm sorry for you," I said, softly.

She fixed her black eyes upon me.

"You are sorry for me," she repeated. "Very good, you do not care for him yourself. But listen! I am afraid, I fear that he cares for you."

"You do not know that," I faltered. "You----"