Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/150

Rh out at the cedars, which looked, to her eyes, twisted and rainbow-rimmed.

"Springing what?" asked Rochester in complete bewilderment. "Tell me—what?" But Jane could find no voice to tell him what.

"Springing what?" he asked again.

"What you told us," said Lucilla, in a sort of faint, timid growl, and then she too became speechless, and turned to the other window and gazed out at the gates and the board, also, to her, prismatically coloured.

"But I haven't told you anything yet," Rochester protested. Four eyes bright with unconcealable tears turned on him astonished reproach.

The bewildered young man was quite overcome. He gazed from Lucilla to Jane; his heart experienced a twinge at sight of Lucilla's brimming eyes, but when he saw the dejected droop of Jane's head he lost his own.

"Ah, don't!" he said, in a voice of extreme tenderness, and he took two steps and put his hand over Jane's hand, which lay on the window-ledge. "Please, please don't. I must have been incredibly stupid—I don't know what I've done, but . . ." Will it be believed that Mr. Dix chose this exact moment to appear at the glass door and ask cheerfully where the wheelbarrow was kept? He looked very handsome though; his classic brow was dotted with beads of sweat, and his blue shirt, open at the neck and rolled up as to the sleeves, accentuated the blue of his eyes. He spoke with perfect respect, of course, but it was the respect of the young man to the woman who is his social equal, not the respect of the gardener to his employer.

"I can't find the wheelbarrow anywhere," he said.

"We hid it behind the laurels," said Lucilla, "in case of burglars. We couldn't get it into the shed. I'll show you," and felt herself being tactful. The spectacle of Mr. Rochester laying his hand on Jane's, and Jane not whisking her hand abruptly from this unusual contact until Mr. Dix's