"Aren"t you always boasting of it? But you are quite right to go away."
"I am not going for a week," he put in quickly. "There will be time for two more rides."
She made no reply, and they paced on. Suddenly the trees began to thin before them, and a splendid wave of colour swept across an open glade in full sunlight.
"Marvellous!" cried Constance. "Oh, stop a moment!"
They pulled up on the brink of a sea of blue. All around them the bluebells lay glowing in the sunshine. The colour and sparkle of them was a physical delight; and with occasional lingering tufts of primroses among them and the young oak scrub pushing up through the blue in every shade of gold and bronze, they made an enchanted garden of the glade.
Falloden dismounted, tied up his horse, and gathered a bunch for his companion.
"I don"t know--ought we?" she said regretfully. "They are not so beautiful when they are torn away. And in a week they will be gone--withered!"
She stooped over them, caressing them, as, taking a strap from the pocket of his own saddle, he tied the flowers to her pommel.
He looked up impetuously.
"Only to spring again!--in this same wood--in other woods--for us to see. Do you ever think how full the world is of sheer pleasure--small and great?" And his eyes told her plainly what his pleasure was at that moment.
Something jarred. She drew herself away, though with fluttering pulses.
Falloden, with a strong effort, checked the tide of impulse in himself.
He mounted again, and suggested a gallop, through a long stretch of green road on the further side of the glade. They let their horses go, and the flying hoof-beats woke the very heart of the wood.
"That was good!" cried Falloden, as they pulled up, drawing in deep draughts of the summer wind. Then he looked at her admiringly.
"How well you hold yourself! You are a perfect rider!"
Against her will Constance sparkled under his praise. Then they turned their horses towards the keeper"s cottage, and the sun fell lower in the west.
"Mr. Falloden," said Constance presently, "I want you to promise me something."
"Ask me," he said eagerly.
"I want you to give up ragging Otto Radowitz!"
His countenance changed.
"Who has been talking to you?"
"That doesn"t matter. It is unworthy of you. Give it up."
Falloden laughed with good humour.
"I a.s.sure you it does him a world of good!"
She argued hotly; astonished, in her young inexperience, that his will could so soon rea.s.sert itself against hers; sharply offended, indeed, that after she had given him the boon of this rendezvous, he could hesitate for a moment as to the boon she asked in return--had humbled herself to ask. For had she not often vowed to herself that she would never, never ask the smallest favour of him; while on her side a diet of refusals and rebuffs was the only means to keep him in check?
But that diet was now gaily administered to herself.
Falloden argued with energy that a man who has never been to a public school has got to be "disciplined" at the university; that Otto Radowitz, being an artist, was specially in need of discipline; that no harm had been done him, or would be done him. But he must be made to understand that certain liberties and impertinences would not be tolerated by the older men.
"He never means them!" cried Constance. "He doesn"t understand. He is a foreigner."
"No! He is an Englishman here--and must behave as such. Don"t spoil him, Lady Connie!"
He looked at her imperiously--half smiling, half frowning.
"Remember!--he is my friend!"
"I do remember," he said drily. "I am not likely to forget." Constance flushed, and proudly dropped the subject. He saw that he had wounded her, but he quietly accepted it. There was something in the little incident that made her more aware of his overbearing character than ever.
"If I married him," she thought, "I should be his slave!"
Tea had been daintily spread for them under a birch-tree near the keeper"s lodge. The keeper"s wife served them with smiles and curtsies, and then discreetly disappeared. Falloden waited on Constance as a squire on his princess; and all round them lay the green encircling rampart of the wood. In the man"s every action, there was the homage of one who only keeps silence because the woman he loves imposes it. But Constance again felt that recurrent fear creeping over her. She had been a fool--a fool!
He escorted her to the gate of the wood where Joseph was waiting.
"And now for our next merry meeting?" he said, as he got down to tighten her stirrup which had stretched a little.
Constance hurriedly said she could not promise--there were so many engagements.
Falloden did not press her. But he held her hand when she gave it him.
"Are you angry with me?" he said, in a low voice, while his eyes mocked a little.
"No--only disappointed!"
"Isn"t that unkind? Haven"t we had a golden time?" His tone smote her a little.
"It was heavenly," she said, "till--"
"Till I behaved like a brute?"
She laughed excitedly, and waved farewell.
Falloden, smiling, watched her go, standing beside his horse--a Siegfried parting from Brunhilde.
When she and the groom had disappeared, he mounted and rode off towards another exit.
"I must be off to-morrow!" he said to himself with decision--"or my schools will go to the dogs!"
CHAPTER VII
"Three more invitations!--since lunch," said Mrs. Hooper, as she came into the schoolroom, where her elder daughter sat by the window renovating a garden hat.
Her mother dropped the envelopes on a small table beside Alice, and sitting down on the other side of it, she waited for her daughter"s comments.