The round table was laid for two. “I thought——” he said.
“Colin and Eva? No; their home is twelve miles from here. They were spending the afternoon with me. I live alone.”
“I thought I was using your son-in-law’s room.”
“No,” she said, “oh, no! That room——” she paused. “The room you used—is my husband’s dressing-room. Since I lost him, it has been kept exactly as he left it. For over thirty years it has looked, each day, just as if he had used it the day before. It did not give you the feeling of a disused apartment?”
“No,” he said; “I thought——”
“You thought it was Colin’s? No; Colin 66has never been into that room. In fact, none enter there. It is a sanctuary of mine.”
Her beautiful eyes were on his face as she said the words, full of an expression which he failed to fathom. He wondered why he should have been ushered into a sanctuary forbidden to others. Yet was he not, also, prepared to admit her into the sanctuary of his inner life, to which none had ever gained admission?
The presence of the old man-servant, who did not leave the room, restrained more intimate conversation. He found himself wondering what they would say when at last they were really alone.
She talked of the beauty of the surrounding country; the wild hills, the heather; the pine woods, full of health-giving fragrance.
He told her of his walking tours.
“It is the only holiday I care for; to walk and walk, alone with Nature, from sunrise to sunset. Usually I reach an inn, 67by nightfall; but it does not trouble me if I don’t. On warm nights, I would just as soon sleep in the open.” He looked up, with the rare smile which softened his face into extraordinary sweetness. “I am afraid you are harbouring a tramp, Lady Tintagel.”
She met the smile with her own. “Am I?” Her voice dropped very low. “My tramp has tramped a long way to reach harbour.”
“A long way? I seem to have been walking all my life, just that I might reach here to-night.”
With a swift movement, she leaned forward and laid her hand on his.
“Wait!” she said.
It was the first time she had touched his hand with hers.
An unexpected emotion awoke within him. It was as if she had pressed an electric switch, as he had seen her do when entering the darkening room. His inner being seemed flooded with light. His cold, 68patient apathy quickened suddenly into impatience. He forgot conventions. He lost control of himself. He threw common sense to the winds. He caught the hand she had withdrawn, and gripped it.
“I can’t wait,” he said. “I have waited so long. I want to talk to you.”
He felt like a headstrong boy who refuses to be good. He felt like a lover who suddenly gives way to the desire, cost what it may, to master his mistress. He felt like a drowning man catching at a rope. He felt like nothing he had ever felt before. And it soothed him to see this stately woman quiver and turn pale. Serve her right! What was she doing to him? Why did her touch go to his brain like the instant intoxication of champagne to a starving man? He felt reckless. Devil take the consequences! He couldn’t play-act any more.
She rose at once. His obvious emotion restored her self-control.
“Come,” she said, quietly. Then, to the 69old man-servant, discreetly busying himself at the sideboard: “Serve the fruit and coffee in the Oak Room, Thomas.”
Even while he blindly followed her, Luke felt a moment of surprise that the order received no deferential acknowledgment. He glanced at the man. Tears were running down his furrowed cheeks.
Strange—even where all was strange. Why should their emotion move this carefully trained automaton?
Lady Tintagel took up a wrap as they passed through the hall, went straight through the Oak Room, and out at the door leading on to the veranda.