IV
AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS
He was a big man, and in his long hairy coat he looked a giant. After the first glance the girl's first wild fear vanished. Burglars and murderers don't wear fur coats in business hours, nor hold goggles in their hand. Perseus, too, having given the alarm, had gone over to the stranger, and was sniffing at him in a way that suggested recognition. The unknown slapped his lean flank.
"Hello, Perse! You don't get any fatter, old man."
As he unwound a great woollen scarf from his neck, a fair, pleasant face, rather damp and weather beaten, emerged. She recognized her chatty friend of La Palèze immediately.
"I'm sorry if I startled you," he said, "but they told me Miss Barbour was in the hall, so I walked in. Were they pleasant dreams?"
Even in the red firelight the color on the girl's cheeks deepened perceptibly. "How can I slip past him?" she said to herself and then aloud: "If you don't mind waiting, I'll go and see whether my cousins are back. My uncle is at Shrewsbury."
"Please don't move," the man answered. "I asked. They're all out still. But perhaps I'd better introduce myself. I'm Bryan Lumsden. I think I'm expected."
"Sir Bryan Lumsden," she repeated. "Oh! we thought you'd come this morning. Leslie waited luncheon."
"I burst a tire at Welshpool," Bryan explained. "Often do in snow, you know."
"Shall I ring for tea?"
"Yes, please. And meantime, let's talk." He took off his coat and flung it over a high-railed chair. "Shall we?"
She sat back, further into the shadow as she hoped, but the vicious flame chose that moment to spurt out—a spurt of peculiar brilliance.
"Now, what can we talk about?" he asked pleasantly, when the footman had gone, carrying the great coat with him.
"The weather?" poor Fenella suggested, with a hollow laugh.
"Or foreign travel, eh? That's even more interesting."
Nelly abandoned her treacherous ambush.
"I couldn't help it," she protested, rubbing the arms of her chair nervously with open palms. "Youwouldtalk to me. And it's—it's so hard to be rude."
"——in return, eh?"
"Yes. You know you shouldn't have done it."
"You had your revenge next day, remember!" he said, and stopped abruptly, as another absurdly big footman, who should have been breaking the glebe in Canada, entered with the tea-tray.
"Shall I turn on the light, miss?" the man asked, disposing various silver-covered dishes on the wide hearth.
"No!—oh yes—if you please, Philip. Why do you say 'revenge'?" she asked, when they were alone again. "I'm not a revengeful person."
"We shall see," he said, taking a cup from her hands. "Power's a great temptation."
Under his steady gaze, which never left her face, except to scan her figure, the ministry of the tea-table was a sad ordeal. In the intervals of discharging her duties she called the hound to her and fondled him anew. That hid one arm, anyway.
"I waited for you a whole morning."
"Oh! I don't believe that!" Said without any coquetry.
"It's the simple fact. And I've heard about you since."
"From Leslie? Of course you would."
"No; she only said, unaccountably: 'A cousin,' leaving me to guess whether it was he, she, or it. I'm thinking of Joe Dollfus."
Suddenly he held his hand up. He had fine senses. "I can hear wheels in the snow. You haven't told me your name."
"Fenella."
"Well, Cousin Fenella! Are we going to be friends?"
"Why not?" faintly.
"I shall be discreet, you know, about—thingsat La Palèze."
The girl's eyes brimmed. Instead of this face, blonde, confident, and animal, another one—lean, spiritualized, with far-seeking, visionary eyes, swam through her tears. "Paul! Paul!" Like any poor maid, beset, at bay in a robber-haunted forest, her heart called to her true love.
"In return, will you keep a secret for me?"
No answer.
"Don't mention Welshpool. I'm supposed to have come straight from London."
"Why should I say anything at all?"
"Oh! one never knows. Give me your hand on it."
What could she do? He was in no hurry to release her, and had hardly dropped it when, chilled and dazed but boisterously light-hearted after their mournful errand, her cousins entered the hall.