He dropped from the saddle with the easy grace that always marked his movements, and came to her, leaving the animal free.
"Why were you running away from me?" he said. "Did you want to cut me?"
He must have felt the trembling of her hand, for all in a moment his manner changed. His fingers closed upon hers with warm a.s.surance. He suddenly laughed into her face.
"Don"t answer either of those questions!" he said. "Didn"t you expect to see me? We came home yesterday, thank the G.o.ds! I"m deadly sick of being away."
"Haven"t you enjoyed yourself?" Avery managed to ask.
He laughed again somewhat grimly. "I wasn"t out for enjoyment. I"ve been--amusing myself more or less. But that"s not the same thing, is it?
I should have drowned myself if I"d stayed out there much longer."
"Don"t talk nonsense!" said Avery.
She spoke with a touch of sharpness. Her agitation had pa.s.sed leaving her vexed with herself and with him.
He received the admonition with a grimace. "Have you heard about my engagement yet?" he enquired irrelevantly, after a moment.
Avery looked at him very steadily through the falling dusk. She had a feeling that he was trying to hoodwink her by some means not wholly praiseworthy.
"Are you engaged?" she asked him, point-blank.
He made a careless gesture. "Everybody says so."
"Are you engaged?" Avery repeated with resolution.
She freed her hand as she uttered the question the second time. She was standing up very straight against the churchyard wall sternly determined to check all trifling.
Piers straightened himself also. From the pride of his att.i.tude she thought that he was about to take offence, but his voice held none as he made reply.
"I am not."
She felt as if some constriction at her heart, of which till that moment she had scarcely been aware, had suddenly slackened. She drew a long, deep breath.
"Sorry, what?" suggested Piers.
He began to tap a careless tattoo with his whip on the toe of his boot.
He did not appear to be regarding her very closely. Yet she did not feel at her ease. That sudden sense as of strain relaxed had left her curiously unsteady.
She ignored his question and asked another. "Why is everybody saying that you are engaged?"
He lifted his shoulders. "Because everybody is more or less of a gossiping fool, I should say. Still," he threw up his head with a laugh, "notions of that sort have their uses. My grandfather for instance is firmly of the opinion that I have come home to be married. I didn"t undeceive him."
"You let him believe--what wasn"t true?" said Avery slowly.
He looked straight at her, with his head flung back. "I did. It suited my purpose. I wanted to get home. He thought it was because the Roses had returned to Wardenhurst. I let him think so. It certainly was deadly without them."
It was then that Avery turned and began quietly to walk on up the hill.
He linked his arm in Pompey"s bridle, and walked beside her.
She spoke after a few moments with something of constraint. "And how have you been--amusing yourself?"
"I?" Carelessly he made reply. "I have been playing around with Ina Rose chiefly--to save us both from boredom."
There sounded a faint jeering note behind the carelessness of his voice.
Avery quickened her pace almost unconsciously.
"It"s all right," said Piers. "There"s been no damage done."
"You don"t know that," said Avery, without looking at him.
"Yes, I do. She"ll marry d.i.c.k Guyes. I told her she would the night before they left, and she didn"t say she wouldn"t. He"s a much better chap than I am, you know," said Piers, with an odd touch of sincerity.
"And he"s head over ears in love with her into the bargain."
"Are you trying to excuse yourself?" said Avery.
He laughed. "What for? For not marrying Ina Rose? I a.s.sure you I never meant to marry her."
"For trifling with her." Avery"s voice was hard, but he affected not to notice.
"A game"s a game," he said lightly.
Avery stopped very suddenly and faced round upon him. "That sort of game," she said, and her voice throbbed with the intensity of her indignation, "is monstrous--is contemptible--a game that none but blackguards ever stoop to play!"
Piers stood still. "Great Scott!" he said softly.
Avery swept on. Once roused, she was ruthless in her arraignment.
"Men--some men--find it amusing to go through life breaking women"s hearts just for the sport of the thing. They regard it as a pastime, in the same light as fox-hunting or cards or racing. And when the game is over, they laugh among themselves and say what fools women are. And so they may be, and so they are, many of them. But is it honourable, is it manly, to take advantage of their weakness? I never thought you were that sort. I thought you were at least honest."
"Did you?" said Piers.
He was holding himself very straight and stiff, just as he had held himself on that day in the winter when she had so indignantly intervened to save his dog from his ungovernable fury. But he did not seem to resent her attack, and in spite of herself Avery"s own resentment began to wane.
She suddenly remembered that her very protest was an admission of intimacy of which he would not scruple to avail himself if it suited his purpose, and with this thought in her mind she paused in confusion.
"Won"t you finish?" said Piers.
She turned to leave him. "That"s all I have to say."
He put out a restraining hand. "Then may I say something?"
The request was so humbly uttered that she could not refuse it. She remained where she was.
"I should like you to know," said Piers, "that I have never given Miss Rose or any other girl with whom I have flirted the faintest shadow of a reason for believing that I was in earnest. That is the truth--on my honour."
"I wonder if--they--would say the same," said Avery.
He shrugged his shoulders. "No one ever before accused me of being a lady-killer. As to your other charge against me, it was not I who deceived my grandfather. It was he who deceived himself."