CHAPTER XIX
A threateningsky was scudding before a fast-rising gale, and an ominous dread lay over the marsh, but Roger Lyndesay walked in a sheltered corner at Kilne between borders of yellow crocus. The hill behind stood like a giant screen between him and the rough weather coming straight from the sea. There was a stone seat let into the side of the fell, where he rested every now and again, looking through the swaying veil of budding branches to the creepered house where he and his forefathers had lived so long, and from its windows had watched ceaselessly over Crump. Even now, though the years were passing, the prestige of the agency still remained with old Roger. Any old tenant, questioned in a hurry, would still have given his name. Rent-day found most of them still besieging his door. Even Callander had a curious feeling that he himself was no more than pupil or assistant to the fine old man.
Pacing slowly in his shelter, Roger found himself wishing, with the ache of an old hurt apparently long healed, that Deborah had been a boy. With his own death, and her possible marriage to a stranger, their particular branch would be cut from the oldroot for ever. It hurt him to think that Kilne would pass into other hands, that others, not of his blood, would sit in his window and look across the river with different eyes. They would never know the myriad faces of the land as he knew them; nor watch as he for the continual miracle of the sun springing red over Cappelside, or dropping yellow behind the Hall, or flinging long shafts of gold down the shadowed aisles of beech. In how many years would they learn the perfect moment when the avenue was at its best; the time of year when the rooks held parliament on the hill; and just what trick of wind brought the clearest music from the kennels? In how many generations would they come to pass the deer without seeing a single head raised in fear, or stretch an empty hand for the gentle nibbling of the collared King of the Herd? Would they heed the kingfisher at his evening drink, or the corncrake calling the scythe all night long, or the sleek head of the otter rising from the deep pool under the old bridge? And would they sit in the dark, alone and perfectly content, watching the lights of Crump across the black water as men watch shrine-candles in the dim church of their worship? These things, that made the life of his soul, were the natural heritage of a son of Kilne, who needed scant initiation into their mysteries. But there was no son at Kilne; only a daughter, into whose hands the birthright of love and service could never fall.
He was roused from his brooding by the sound ofhoofs stamping at the gate, and with some curiosity he trod slowly round to find Slinker’s wife on the point of slipping from the saddle. His mind had been so much in the past that his fast-fading memory failed to put a name to her, and as she stooped with a smile to hand him a letter, mourning-edged, his courtly old heart warmed to her grace and spirit.
“For Deb,” she told him, as he took the envelope, and was on the point of asking to see her when her horse, which had been plunging and backing, swung her across the road and almost on to the iron railing.
“He’s girthed too tight, I think,” she explained, when she had brought him back and slid to the ground. “He’s a perfect mount, as a rule, but he’s been behaving badly all the way, so I think there must be something wrong.”
She pulled off her gauntlets and lifted the flap, but Roger Lyndesay interposed with a courteous movement.
“Allow me!” he said gently, and she stood aside while he loosened the girths, the horse standing quietly enough, even turning his head to push softly at Roger’s shoulder. And she knew, as she watched, why Deborah’s hands were so like Christian’s.
When he had settled things to his satisfaction, and dropped a last caress on the smooth neck, the old man turned with a smile and gallantly offered his palm to mount her; but she stepped back, shaking her head, the embarrassed colour rising to her eyes.
“Not that!” she said firmly, as he stared in surprise. “I can’t allow you to do that. That sort of thing’s for gentlefolk, Mr. Lyndesay, not for old Steenie Stone’s daughter!”
A faint flush swept over the ivory face, and the proud old back made an effort after its ancient dignity.
“You are Stanley’s widow—Mrs. Lyndesay?” he asked coldly and with a touch of resentment, as if she had entrapped him, helpless, into an impossible situation.
“That’s what they call me here.” Mrs. Slinker nodded, with her hand on the stirrup. “I don’t call myself that, you may be sure, least of all toyou, Mr. Lyndesay! You think I’m an interloper, I know, and you’re quite right. I’ve no business at Crump—I know my place well enough for that. There are plenty of folks ready enough to cocker me and tell me I’m a fine lady, but for all that I don’t forget who I am. And I remember you, Mr. Lyndesay, ever since I could walk. You used to come over to my father’s, often, and you always had a look and a kind word for me—then. I can see you now, cantering into the yard on that grand chestnut of yours—they’ve always had chestnuts at Crump, haven’t they?—and all the stable doors flung wide for you to have your pick. You did all the choosing for William Lyndesay, I’ve heard Father say, and he kept a fine stud up at the Hall in those days, didn’t he?”
Old Roger was half-turned to the gate, lookingdown at the road, but she could tell that he was listening.
“Old days are best, after all, aren’t they?” she went on, with a wistful drop of her voice. “I used to stop up at Dockerneuk when I was a girl—many a happy time I’ve had there; I’ve had nothing like it since. Now I’m stopping at the Hall—it’s queer, isn’t it? My father made a lot of money, you know, and he had me well-educated—when he could get me to leave him and his horses! And when he died, I went abroad for a bit; my sister had married in Canada, and it was pretty lonely for Nettie Stone. I’d known Stanley as a boy, and I came across him again at Taormina—well, we needn’t talk about that, need we? But I’d like you to know that I haven’t forgotten my place. My father thought the world of you and your judgment, and he taught his daughter to do the same. I’ll always have that picture of you, riding into Hundhow, straight as an arrow, on Crump Clever Lass, with all the doors flying open, and my father on the step, smiling and touching his hat. I may seem a rank outsider, Mr. Lyndesay, an impertinent upstart to an aristocrat like you, but I’m touching my hat to you all the time in my heart!”
Roger turned slowly and looked at her as she stood fumbling with the stirrup, her pleading eyes fixed on him, and the deferential sentences hurrying each other from her lips. Then he swept his hat very low, and offered his hand a second time for her foot. She accepted it, now, with a tremulous smile; and as heput it up, the next moment, to straighten her habit, she caught it between her own, palm upward, looking at it. “Only a little dust,” she said, very tenderly and reverently. “Nothing to hurt even a Lyndesay! And I didn’t weigh much heavier myself, did I? I shall always remember that you paid me the greatest honour of my life!”
She turned her horse and rode away quickly, for the tears were in her eyes, and Roger Lyndesay went slowly into the house with the note.
He found Deb in the pantry, polishing the silver candlesticks which had been William Lyndesay’s last gift to him; and again, as he looked at her bright youth and alert grace, the longing came to him that she had been a boy. He passed his hand lovingly over the shining metal, and along the inscription with its sincere words of recognition.
“They are yours, Deb, remember,” he said, laying down the letter, as she put the leather back in its place. “If I had a son, they would be his, of course, but as it is, they are yours. Keep them always. Don’t let any of the Morton people have them.”
“Just let them try!” Deb answered defiantly, hugging her treasure jealously in her arms. “Don’t be afraid, Dad. I’ll never let anybody else put a finger on them. And I’ll stick to them if I’m starving in the street, with the pair of them tucked safely under my shawl!”
“You should have been a boy!” he sighed, giving vent to his insistent thought at last. “As it is, youwill have to leave Kilne when I am gone. If you had been a boy, you would have had the agency, and stayed on here for life. You would have taken on the work as a matter of course.”
“Should I?” she asked, with her eyes on the candlesticks.
“Why, certainly—if you had been a boy. You would have belonged to the old place like the rest of us. As things are, you cannot be expected to feel the call.”
“Can’t a girl feel it, then?” Deb enquired, without lifting her eyes. “Does a girl never hanker after her father’s profession, and feel that the rest of life is nothing beside it?”
He smiled faintly with a touch of amusement, shaking his head.
“How should a girl hear a call of that kind? It’s the men that count in that, not the women—never the women. If I had had a son,hewould have heard it. You have been a good daughter to me, Deborah, but it takes a man to understand these things.”
He went back into the garden after that, forgetting that he had said nothing of Mrs. Stanley, and for a long time Deb stood rigid, gazing into vacancy, the candlesticks clasped in her arms. All the hidden longing of her childhood, all the repressed passion of her later years, rose and swept over her in a flood, and sobbed and tore at her heart. Not even her father, living in such close communion with her, had guessed at the motive of her whole being. Ifonly she had been a boy—ah, if only she had been a boy! But she was nothing but a helpless, useless, girl, and soon, very soon, perhaps, she would be in exile, as the boy need never have been. She was a girl, and she would have to go. She gripped the candlesticks tighter. In that moment she swore to marry Christian, no matter what the rash act might bring—pain, shame, or lifelong remorse; and the ironic gods, who await our flashes of complete decision to hound on their instant refutation, loosed their leash.
She had avoided him since the concert, disappearing along side-roads and sending down messages of excuse when he called; but all that was over. She would avoid him no more. This one means of restitution was left to the girl who ought to have been a boy.
At last she drew a long, sobbing breath and stirred, setting down the candlesticks and reaching for the forgotten note. Its contents came as a sharp surprise, for they requested her attendance upon Mrs. Lyndesay at her earliest possible convenience.
Her first impulse was to let the command—for it was nothing less—pass unnoticed, but she reflected that, under the circumstances, such flagrant independence would scarcely be wise. She could marry Christian, of course, in the face of his mother’s opposition, but the situation was more than likely to be sufficiently unpleasant, in any case, and only folly would deliberately add to it. She dressed slowly,knowing she would go, but debating the point impatiently, nevertheless, and turning even at the gate on a sharp impulse of resentment and defiance. An old hawker, passing, lifted his ragged whip and shook it at her with a toothless smile.
“Never turn back, lady!” the old voice creaked across the wall. “It’s bad luck to turn when you’ve once started. You’ll not prosper, lady! You’ll rue it before morning!”
She laughed, waving her hand after the rattling cart, and forgot the superstition on the spot; but later—that very night—the warning came back to her, knife-edged.
Still, the incident had shaken her out of her morbid self-introspection, and she walked rapidly to Crump, refusing stoutly to fear what lay before her. It was foolish to cross bridges until you came to them, and the unexpected might prove pleasant, after all. Perhaps an apology for the slight on her father—but even her sudden change of mood could not show her Mrs. Lyndesay apologising to anybody about anything.
Nettie appeared from the stable-yard as she approached, and came to meet her. She wondered whether Deborah knew of her recent interview, but as the girl said nothing, she guessed that the old man had not told, and she held her peace. Not until years after he was dead, did she tell Roger Lyndesay’s daughter of the little scene she had held sacred so long.
“I don’t know why you were asked,” she observed, as they went up the approach together. “She never mentions you to me, you know, and I can’t exactly make a point of discussing you. I was just asked to deliver the note, that was all. It’s ripping of you to come,Ithink. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me if she’d treated me as she’s treated you.”
“I was born at the beck of Crump,” Deb answered, looking up at the old house. “It’s in the blood, and I can’t help it.Youcan afford to snap your fingers at it, but Kilne must come running if it lifts a hand.”
“I wish to goodness Ihadsnapped my fingers at it!” Mrs. Slinker said sadly, as they went in. (She had not seen Dixon for a month.) “Rishwald dines here to-night,” she added, in a lighter tone. “I’m getting rather worried about him, to tell the truth. I fancy he thinks I’d make a nice match for his Tobies and Queen Annes. No—not there”—as Deb turned instinctively towards the library. “Upstairs, in Stanley’s own room—horrid little smoke-pot! You know it, of course, so I’ll let you go alone; but if she gets really rampant, just let out a yell, and I’ll come up at a gallop.”
She let go the girl’s hand rather reluctantly, for Deb had unconsciously gone white; and then, on a sudden impulse, she stooped and kissed her.
“I’m older than you,” she said, almost apologetically, “older and harder, and I’ve got used to the atmosphere of this mouldy old place. I won’t let it suckthe soul out of me. It gets you by the throat, doesn’t it, when you come in? It’s—it’s the old lady!”—she nodded upstairs, a look half-mischievous, half-frightened, on her face—“Mrs. Lyndesay and that vampire of a tree out on the lawn. When they’re gone, please God, there’ll be a clean wind blowing through Crump!”
She disappeared, and Deb, ascending past an open window facing west, was caught in a great blast of air, shaking the pictures on the walls, and shrieking eerily round the eaves, as the tide rose and the gale grew steadily from the sea. She drew in a deep breath of it before she climbed the last stair and knocked at Slinker’s door.
Personality clings to a room long after the occupant is dead, especially if it be left untouched, and as she entered, meeting the portrait’s meaning smile, it seemed to her that Slinker himself was there indeed. She had forgotten the picture, and the shock of it held her captive for a moment, until, dropping her eyes, she met the same disconcerting smile on the cold lips of his mother. Her first words made her start, translating as they did the thought in her mind.
“Oh, yes, he’s here!” Mrs. Lyndesay said coolly. “You felt him when you opened the door—don’t deny it. He is here, all the time, listening when we speak.” She looked round at one of the big chairs by the fire, and Deborah felt a sudden fear thrill the morbid atmosphere already invoked. Yet the eyes that turned back to her were sane enough, and hardas gems are hard, as the light on a new-drawn sword, and the line of Lake hills before rain.
“People never die,” said Mrs. Lyndesay. “You think you’ve got rid of them, but they come back—they always come back. Yet Stanley is dead in the eyes of the world, and Christian follows him. That is sufficient for you. You would have married Stanley; and now you mean to marry—his heir!”
Deborah drew back, the blood surging to her face, for she had never thought of this. Christian had passed his word to say nothing, and she had given no soul on earth a clue to their secret.
“You wonder how I know?” Mrs. Lyndesay asked smoothly. “It is simple—these things are always simple.” She indicated the window looking towards the stables. “One of the boys was talking of you, to-day. He had followed hounds, it seemed, the day of the Crump meet. He informed an assembly of open-mouthed employees that he had seen Christian holding your hand. Does it please you to be meat for gossip in the mart of the stable-yard?”
Deb, beaten to the wall, looked helplessly round the room, only to be conscious of enmity everywhere, from the politely-sneering portrait to her late picture-postcard rivals. She wondered vaguely what had happened to her own photograph, and concluded that Slinker’s mother had destroyed it. Meanwhile the passionless voice went on relentlessly.
“It is a fortnight since the meet, and you have not as yet seen fit to give me any information on thispoint. I must conclude, therefore, that you intend to be married secretly, so that you can snap your fingers in the face of disapproval, mine and that of every right-thinking individual. For I know that youdomean to marry my son. I have known it—sub-consciously, I suppose—ever since the day of Stanley’s death. You mean to marry Christian as you would have married his brother—for Crump!”
There was a pause, and then Deb said—“It is true!” as she had said once before on a similar night of storm, in the library downstairs.
The other looked at her with a certain cold wonder.
“Lyndesays are all ambitious,” she said, “all ambitious and all proud. I myself am a Lyndesay born, as you know. But you are more ambitious, prouder, surer of yourself than any of us. You would seize Crump in the teeth of all right feeling, decency and respect, grasping an honour snatched from the very hand of the dead. Was there not enough of the scandal laid to your credit, that you must force another upon the family?”
“The scandal was not of my making!” Deb replied, and the older woman gave a curious laugh.
“Stanley is listening, remember! Perhapshecould tell us how you tempted him, how the force of your passion to be mistress of Crump carried him off his feet and made him false to his vows—for a while. He would have gone back to his wife—I, his mother, tell you that. Do not flatter yourself that you would have had him, in any case, had he lived. He wouldhave gone back to his wife! You came at a time when he was lonely and unhappy, and you drew him to you by the same spell that you have thrown over Christian. But the one escaped you, and so shall the other—ay, if he has to follow the same road!”
“Stanley came to me of his own accord!” Deb began hotly, and stopped, for the insidious atmosphere crept upon her, filling her with doubt. Perhaps, after all, she had drawn Stanley without knowing it. He had ignored her at first, but later, when she had turned on him on the subject of some ill-used servant, he had laughed at her and made friends with her; and after that he had seemed unable to keep away. His eyes had followed her hungrily and almost helplessly, and in her presence he had been generally good-humoured and even kind. Had she indeed a spell that drew these men to her whether she would or not? The thought struck her sharply that even Christian had never said he loved her. He did not love her, she felt that, but she had thought him near it. Was it just the charm working, and no more—the attraction of her longing, the magnetism of her passionate desire?
“Christian pities you!” the voice went on cruelly. “He realises all that you lost when you lost Stanley. He thinks he owes you his brother’s debt. He does not love you—surely you cannot imagine that? Christian does not care for women. He is as cold as Galahad. But he can give you as much as Stanley could have given you—his place and his prestige,his house and his money, his carriages and horses, his hothouses, hounds and men! He thinks you are breaking your heart for these—all the things after which a poor relation naturally hankers—and he is generous enough to wish that you should have them. Christian would always have given his last coin to a beggar—and this is yours. A delicate position, isn’t it?” she sneered. “Will you still take Crump at the price?”
Deb said “Yes!” faintly enough, but clinging to her determination and nebulous hopes in spite of the crushing opposition closing about her. She had had a vision of things come right, up on the hill alone with Christian, and its fragrant promise clung to her dimly even yet. Moreover, she would never crawl to this woman.
Mrs. Lyndesay seemed puzzled. She had been so sure of her instrument, and she wondered where her touch had failed.
“I thought not even you could have sunk to that!” she said at last. “Will you marry a second man who cares no more for you than for a pet horse or hound?”
Deb winced and looked away, and this time the other followed her glance as it went back to the place where her photograph had hung. “Christian took your picture,” she said casually. “I missed it one day just after he had been in. It was last year—months since—when he hardly knew and was scarcely interested in you, so you will not be able to flatter yourself that he was in love with youthen! Isuppose he took it because he was sorry for you—that is Christian all over. He always hated this room, and you were obviously out of place among these birds of a feather!”
She waved her hand scornfully at the cheap faces she hated, yet which she permitted no one else to handle, and sat back, satisfied, awaiting results. And she had every reason to be satisfied, for her last speech had clinched her argument in full, though after a fashion of which she did not dream.
Deb stood staring at the empty space, unconscious for the moment of the evil presences lying in wait, seeing only the kindness in Christian’s face as his hand went out to her, and the delicate chivalry that had hastened to shield a girl he scarcely knew and could hardly respect. He filled the room in spite of his brother—at that instant, Slinker was certainly and praisefully dead—and the dream on the hill caught her again in its rosy fingers. The inner meaning of her heart-searchings came home to her in a flash of revelation, and she understood why she had hesitated to wrong him and herself, as she had never hesitated with Stanley—why she must give him up now when he had grown to fill her whole world. For she knew at last that she loved him.
The room ceased to have any hold on her. The portrait’s eyes claimed her no longer. She turned back to Mrs. Lyndesay, bewildering her with a sudden smile.
“I will give him up!” she said definitely, in a tonethat held neither resignation nor defeat, but something brighter and braver than had ever purified the atmosphere of Slinker’s lair. “I will give him back his promise—not because you have badgered me into submission, nor because I am afraid of gossip or the idle chatter of a few stable-boys, but because I know something now that I did not know before. I could hold him in spite of you, but I will not try.”
“I will not try!” she said a second time, and laid her sword at her enemy’s feet.
There was a moment’s silence, while the mistress of Crump leaned across the table, staring into the girl’s face; then pushed back her chair with an abrupt movement.
“Why, I believe you love him!” she exclaimed incredulously, and as Deb looked at her, saying nothing—“You poor fool!” she added harshly, and at that moment Christian knocked and entered.
“Am I interrupting?” he asked pleasantly, looking from one to the other. “Nettie told me Deborah was here.” He held out his hand, and she put hers into it mechanically. “When you’ve finished, will you lend her to me for a little while? Callander and I have been hammering away at that boundary dispute, and Deb is sure to know the rights of the case.”
“Deborah is here to show you the rights of some other question,” his mother replied curtly, rising. “I will leave you to discuss it.” She moved to the door, but Christian put out his arm.
“Please explain!” he said gently. “What haveyou been saying to Deborah? Anything that concerns her concerns me—now.”
“She is here to undeceive you on that point. I am aware that you have foolishly allowed yourself to be entrapped into an engagement, much as your brother was caught before you, but that, too, is at an end. You have me to thank for your liberty. Deborah has given me her word to set you free.”
Christian, his mind in a whirl, looked across at Deb, standing motionless by the window, gazing down into the yard. Something had happened, though he could not even begin to guess what it was, except that in some mysterious way his mother had come to know of the contract on the hill. But at least she should not interfere. She had taken something from him once already in this very room, but she should never take from him the man’s right to choose his own mate. His colour rose as he still barred her exit.
“I don’t understand how you know anything about it,” he said quickly. “Not that it matters. Of course we should have told you very soon. I should have liked you to have been glad, but I want Deborah for my wife in any case, and if she is willing to come to me, I will not let anything else stand in the way.”
“You will find more than enough in the way,” Mrs. Lyndesay answered strangely. “You will find—Deborah herself!” And at her imperious gesture he lowered his arm and watched her pass from the room. Deb’s heart followed her in a faint thrill of feeling towards a personality she had always hated.At least she had not betrayed her, even by a hint. For the first and last time in her life, she was grateful to her.
She stood by the window, thinking hard. It was plain that Christian was not ready to let her go. His liberty would have to be forced upon him, for she had passed her word and she meant to keep it. She might have risked her soul for Crump, but she would not throw her new-born love into the scale.
He came to her quickly, demanding—“What does it mean?” puzzled and impatient. “Who can have said anything to my mother? Not you, of course. But who can possibly have told?”
“That infinitesimal Sherlock—a stable-boy!” she answered lightly, looking at the wide quadrangle of buildings below. “One of your small fry saw us up on Linacre, and Mrs. Lyndesay overheard the result of his observations.”
“Then that settles it!” he said definitely. “You must give me permission to announce our engagement at once.”
But Deb shook her head.
“Your mother told you that I had thought better of it. It’s the truth, so you may as well accept it without argument. I expect you’ll be rather relieved, as a matter of fact. You’re too nice to be married for your property, Christian, and I think I’m too nice to be married for pity.”
“Pity!” He took her hands and turned her towards him, keenly searching her face. “Why,Debbie dear, you can’t really think anything as silly as that! We’re such good friends, you and I—don’t let my mother’s bitterness wrench us apart.”
“We can still be good friends,” she answered steadily. “It isn’t as if there had ever been any—anything that mattered—between us. These last two weeks don’t count—not as they would have counted if we’d—cared. You were feeling chivalrous up at Linacre, and I was lonely, thinking of the day when I should have to leave Kilne. That’s not sufficient foundation for a lifetime together, and we knew it well enough, even then. Let’s go back to what we were. After all, no—no harm—has been done.”
“No harm?” Christian echoed. “It depends what you mean by that. How can we go back? And of course these two weeks count! Do you think a man ever feels the same towards a woman after he has once thought of her definitely as his wife, even for a day? It’s absurd to talk like that. You’re mine, and I mean to keep you. Have I done anything unconsciously to make you change your mind?—or is it just my mother’s influence and no more? You don’t like me less than you did, do you?” he went on earnestly. “I’ll cut my throat if you don’t go on liking me, Debbie dear!”
She laughed, though the tears were behind.
“You’re as nice as ever you can be! I’ve told you that once already—too nice to be handed over to anybody you don’t want so frightfully that you’dclimb the stars for her. And that isn’t how you feel towards a ‘friend,’ Squire Lakin’ Lyndesay!”
“But I do!” he protested hotly. “I don’t only think of you as a comrade, though you’re the best a man could want. I think of you as the woman I love——”
“Ah, don’t say it!” She stopped him, her voice full of pain, and they stood silent, staring out of the window.
Which of them was right at that moment he could not have told. He was only conscious that she was necessary to him, that she filled an empty place in his heart, strengthening his hand by the touch of hers. He saw her as a kindred spirit upon whom he could rely, a fountain of that sympathy of which he had been so stubbornly deprived, the dearest part of the new life he had been called upon to lead; and he could not let her go. He tightened his clasp on her hands and drew her nearer.
“You’ve been thinking things, all sorts of absurd and unkind things, and my mother’s been thinking other things for you; but now you’ve got to think withmeand listen tome! I want you for my wife, Deb, and it doesn’t matter a jotwhyyou marry me as long as youdomarry me, so tell me I still have your promise, and trust me to bring my mother round, after a while.”
“It doesn’t matter?” Deb looked at him intently, sadly, yet with a touch of mischief in spite of her aching heart. “It doesn’treallymatter if I marryyou for a daily drive behind liveries, rather than for the sake of belonging to you and being your wife?—not because I want to be with you always, and because of the way you smile and speak, and bring the sunshine with you wherever I happen to be, but because it is a fine thing to be mistress of Crump, and to have the first place at dinner parties, and all the County kowtowing to me, hat in hand? It doesn’treallymatter?”
His face fell boyishly, and she drew a sharp breath of mixed relief and pain, for if he had loved her he would have known how hopelessly she had betrayed herself in that last speech. He would have caught her in his arms and crushed her foolish argument into silence; not have stood looking down at her doubtfully, as Christian was doing, half-smiling and half abashed.
“But youdolike to be with me, don’t you?” he asked anxiously; and she just answered, “Oh, Christian!” rather hysterically, trying to free her hands, and after a moment’s struggle he let them go.
“I don’t believe that you only care for the flesh-pots,” he said, his face very troubled. “You always make out that you do, but anybody who knows you as well as I do can see that you’re not really like that. It’s only natural, of course, that the place should appeal to you. You’re not a Lyndesay for nothing. But you’re too fine a nature to marry a man for whom you had no feeling whatever. If you care for me only a little, Deb, we’ll get along all right and make life a success. Others have done it who didn’t start with halfas good a friendship as ours. Tell me it’s not just the place and nothing else, and I’ll keep you in spite of everybody, in spite of my mother, in spite of yourself. Tell me you care a little!”
“As I cared for Stanley!” she answered steadily, making a last effort; and as the portrait flashed back upon their consciousness, it seemed to both that Slinker himself was in very truth standing there between them.