Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/260

252 “Of course not—if you won’t. They’re his violets you’re wearing by the way.”

“Are they—let them stay, it makes no difference. But whatever did he want to see me for?”

“I couldn’t say, I assure you.”

She glanced at herself in the mirror, and then at the clock.

“Let’s see,” she remarked, “it’s only a quarter to eight. Three quarters of an hour—! But what can he want me for?—I never knew anything like it.”

“Startling, isn’t it!” I observed satirically.

“Yes,” she glanced at herself in the mirror:

“I can’t go out like this.”

“All right, you can’t then.”

“Besides—it’s nearly dark, it will be too dark to see in the wood, won’t it?”

“It will directly.”

“Well, I’ll just go to the end of the garden, for one moment—run and fetch that silk shawl out of my wardrobe—be quick, while it’s light.”

I ran and brought the wrap. She arranged it carefully over her head.

We went out, down the garden path. Lettie held her skirts carefully gathered from the ground. A nightingale began to sing in the twilight; we stepped along in silence as far as the rhododendron bushes, now in rosy bud.

“I cannot go into the wood,” she said.

“Come to the top of the riding”—and we went round the dark bushes.

George was waiting. I saw at once he was half distrustful of himself now. Lettie dropped her skirts