He said nothing; and after a minute she could not help looking up. She met an expression which showed a wounded gentleman beside her.
"I hope you saw the races well?" he said coldly.
"Excellently. And Mr. Sorell explained everything."
"You knew him before?"
"But of course!" she said, laughing. "I have known him for years."
"You never mentioned him--at Cannes."
"One does not always catalogue one"s acquaintance, does one?"
"He seems to be more than an acquaintance."
"Oh, yes. He is a great friend. Mamma was so fond of him. He went with us to Sicily once. And Uncle Ewen likes him immensely."
"He is of course a paragon," said Falloden.
Constance glanced mockingly at her companion.
"I don"t see why he should be called anything so disagreeable. All we knew of him was--that he was delightful! So learned--and simple--and modest--the dearest person to travel with! When he left us at Palermo, the whole party seemed to go flat."
"You pile it on!"
"Not at all. You asked me if he were more than an acquaintance. I am giving you the facts."
"I don"t enjoy them!" said Falloden abruptly.
She burst into her soft laugh.
"I"m so sorry. But I really can"t alter them. Where has my party gone to?"
She looked ahead, and saw that by a little judicious holding back Falloden had dexterously isolated her both from his own group and hers.
Mrs. Manson and Lady Laura were far ahead in the wide, moving crowd that filled the new-made walk across the Christ Church meadow; so were the Hoopers and the slender figure and dark head of Alexander Sorell.
"Don"t distress yourself, please. We shall catch them up before we get to Merton Street. And this only pays the very smallest fraction of your debt! I understood that if my mother wrote--"
She coloured brightly.
"I didn"t promise!" she said hastily. "And I found the Hoopers were counting on me."
"No doubt. Oh, I don"t grumble. But when friends--suppose we take the old path under the wall? It is much less crowded."
And before she knew where she was, she had been whisked out of the stream of visitors and undergraduates, and found herself walking almost in solitude in the shadow of one of the oldest walls in Oxford, the Cathedral towering overhead, the crowd moving at some distance on their right.
"That"s better," said Falloden coolly. "May I go on? I was saying that when one friend disappoints another--bitterly!--there is such a thing as making up!"
There were beautiful notes in Falloden"s deep voice, when he chose to employ them. He employed them now, and the old thrill of something that was at once delight and fear ran through Constance. But she looked him in the face, apparently quite unmoved.
"Now it is you who are piling it on! You will use such tragic expressions for the most trivial things. Of course, I am sorry if--"
"Then make amends!"--he said quickly. "Promise me--if the mare turns out well--you will ride in Lathom Woods--on Sat.u.r.day?"
His eyes shone upon her. The force of the man"s personality seemed to envelope her, to beat down the resistance which, as soon as he was out of her sight, the wiser mind in her built up.
She hesitated--smiled. And again the smile--or was it the May sun and wind?--gave her that heightening, that touch of brilliance that a face so delicate must often miss.
Falloden"s fastidious sense approved her wholly: the white dress; the hat that framed her brow; the slender gold chains which rose and fell on her gently rounded breast; her height and grace. Pa.s.sion beat within him. He hung on her answer.
"Sat.u.r.day--impossible! I am not free till Monday, at least. And what about the groom?" She looked up.
"I shall parade him to-morrow, livery, horse and all. I undertake he shall give satisfaction. The Lathom Woods just now are a dream!"
"It is all a dream!" she said, looking round her at the beauty of field and tree, of the May clouds, and the grey college walls--youth and youth"s emotion speaking in the sudden softening of her eyes.
He saw--he felt her--yielding.
"You"ll come?"
"I--I suppose I may as well ride in Lathom Woods as anywhere else. You have a key?"
"The groom will have it. I meet you there."
She flushed a bright pink.
"That might have been left vague!"
"How are you to find your way through those woods without a guide?" he protested.
She was silent a moment, then she said with decision:
"I must overtake my people."
"You shall. I want you to talk to my mother--and--you have still to introduce me to your aunt and cousins."
Mirth crept into her eyes. The process of taming him had begun.
Falloden on the way back to his lodgings handed over his family to the tender offices of Meyrick and a couple of other gilded youths, who had promised to look after them for the evening. They were to dine at the Randolph, and go to a college concert. Falloden washed his hands of them, and shut himself up for five or six hours" grind, broken only by a very hasty meal. The thought of Constance hovered about him--but his will banished it. Will and something else--those apt.i.tudes of brain which determined his quick and serviceable intelligence.
When after his frugal dinner he gave himself in earnest to the article in a French magazine, on a new French philosopher, which had been recommended to him by his tutor as likely to be of use to him in his general philosophy paper, his mind soon took fire; Constance was forgotten, and he lost himself in the splendour shed by the original and creative thought of a great man, climbing, under his guidance, as the night wore on, from point to point, and height to height, amid the Oxford silence, broken only by the chiming bells, and a benighted footfall in the street outside, until he seemed to have reached the bounds of the phenomenal and to be close on that outer vastness whence stream the primal forces--_Die Mutter_--as Goethe called them--whose play is with the worlds.
Then by way of calming the brain before sleep, he fell upon some notes to be copied and revised, on the "Religious Aspects of Greek Drama," and finally amused himself with running through an ingenious "Memoria Technica" on the 6th Book of the Ethics which he had made for himself during the preceding winter.
Then work was done, and he threw it from him with the same energy as that wherewith he had banished the remembrance of Constance some hours before. Now he could walk his room in the May dawn, and think of her, and only of her. With all the activity of his quickened mental state, he threw himself into the future--their rides together--their meetings, few and measured till the schools were done--then!--all the hours of life, and a man"s most obstinate effort, spent in the winning of her. He knew well that she would be difficult to win.
But he meant to win her--and before others could seriously approach her.