There were few passers on the high-road, none on
this deserted way; but the girl in all her loneliness shrank back into
the shadow. In these minutes she endured the bitter mistrust, the sore
hesitancy, of awaiting on a certain but unknown grief.
She had not long to wait, for Lewis came down the Avelin side by a
bypath from Etterick village. His alert gait covered his very real
confusion, but to the girl he seemed one who belonged to an alien world
of cheerfulness. He could not know her grief, and she regretted her
coming.
His manners were the same courteous formalities. The man was torn with
emotion, and yet he greeted her with a conventional ease.
"It was so good of you, Miss Wishart, to give me a chance to come and
say good-bye. My going is such a sudden affair, that I might have had
no time to come to Glenavelin, but I could not have left without seeing
you."
The girl murmured some indistinct words. "I hope you will have a good
time and come back safely," she said, and then she was tongue-tied.
The two stood before each other, awkward and silent--two between whom no
word of love had ever been spoken, but whose hearts were clamouring at
the iron gates of speech.
Alice's face and neck were dyed crimson, as the impossible position
dawned on her mind. No word could break down the palisade, of form.
Lewis, his soul a volcano, struggled for the most calm and inept words.
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