Part 33 (1/2)

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand from his, and sprang to her feet. He, too, rose astounded, gazing on every side to see who was coming. But the plain was flecked only with straggling sheep, bleating to the troughs. His gaze came back to the girl. Her straw hat sharply shadowed her face like a highwayman's mask, her blue eyes flas.h.i.+ng in the midst of it, and her lips below parted in pa.s.sion.

”You? I hate you! I _do_ consider myself bound, and you would make me false--you would tempt me through my love for the bush, for this place--you coward!”

Swift reddened, and there was roughness in his answer:

”I can't stand this, even from you. I have heard that all women are unfair; you are, certainly. What you say about my tempting you is nonsense. You have shown me that you love me, and that you don't love the other man; you know you have. You have now to show whether you have the courage of your love--to give him up--to marry me.”

This method must have had its attractions after another's; but it hurt, because Tiny was sensitive, with all her sins.

”You have spoken very cruelly,” she faltered, delightfully forgetting how she had spoken herself. ”I could not marry anyone who spoke to me like that!”

”Oh, forgive me!” he cried, covered with contrition in an instant. ”I am a rough brute, but I promise----” He stopped, for her head had drooped, and she seemed to be crying. He stood away from her in his shame. ”Yes, I am a rough brute,” he repeated bitterly; ”but, darling, you don't know how it roughens one, bossing the men!”

Still she hung her head, but within the widened shadow of her hat he saw her red mouth twitching at his clumsiness. Yet, when she raised her face, her smile astonished him, it was so timorous; and the wondrous shyness in her lovely eyes abashed him far more than her tears.

”I dare say--I need that!” he heard her whisper in spurts. ”I think I should like--you--to boss--me--too.”

These things and others were tersely told in a letter written in the hot blast of a north wind at Wallandoon, and delivered in London six weeks later, damp with the rain of early April. The letter arrived by the last post, and Ruth read it on the sofa in her husband's den, while Erskine paced up and down the room, listening to the sentences she read aloud, but saying little.

”So you see,” said Ruth as she put the thin sheets together and replaced them in their envelope, ”she accepted him before she knew of Lord Manister's engagement. _He_ knew of it, and had undertaken to tell her, but that was only to give himself a last chance. Had she heard of it first he would never have spoken again.”

”I question that,” Erskine said thoughtfully. ”He might not have spoken so soon; but his love would have proved stronger than his pride in the end. Yet I like him for his pride. That was what she needed, and what Manister lacked. It is very curious.”

”I wonder if you really would like him,” said Ruth, who no longer cared for the sound of Lord Manister's name. ”I don't remember much about him, except that we all thought a good deal of him; but somehow I don't fancy he's your sort.”

”I wasn't aware that I had a sort,” Erskine said, smiling.

”Oh, but you have. _I_ am not your sort. But Tiny was!”