Gaining a knoll on which the park transformed itself into wood and copse, Knight came still closer to her side, and said, “Are you better now, dearest?”
“Oh yes.” She pressed a hand to her eyes, as if to blot out the image of Stephen. A vivid scarlet spot now shone with preternatural brightness in the centre of each cheek, leaving the remainder of her face lily-white as before.
“Elfride,” said Knight, rather in his old tone of mentor, “you know I don’t for a moment chide you, but is there not a great deal of unwomanly weakness in your allowing yourself to be so overwhelmed by the sight of what, after all, is no novelty? Every woman worthy of the name should, I think, be able to look upon death with something like composure. Surely you think so too?”
“Yes; I own it.”
His obtuseness to the cause of her indisposition, by evidencing his entire freedom from the suspicion of anything behind the scenes, showed how incapable Knight was of deception himself, rather than any inherent dullness in him regarding human nature. This, clearly perceived by Elfride, added poignancy to her self-reproach, and she idolized him the more because of their difference. Even the recent sight of Stephen’s face and the sound of his voice, which for a moment had stirred a chord or two of ancient kindness, were unable to keep down the adoration re-existent now that he was again out of view.
She had replied to Knight’s question hastily, and immediately went on to speak of indifferent subjects. After they had reached home she was apart from him till dinnertime. When dinner was over, and they were watching the dusk in the drawing-room, Knight stepped out upon the terrace. Elfride went after him very decisively, on the spur of a virtuous intention.
“Mr. Knight, I want to tell you something,” she said, with quiet firmness.
“And what is it about?” gaily returned her lover. “Happiness, I hope. Do not let anything keep you so sad as you seem to have been today.”
“I cannot mention the matter until I tell you the whole substance of it,” she said. “And that I will do tomorrow. I have been reminded of it today. It is about something I once did, and don’t think I ought to have done.”
This, it must be said, was rather a mild way of referring to a frantic passion and flight, which, much or little in itself, only accident had saved from being a scandal in the public eye.
Knight thought the matter some trifle, and said pleasantly:
“Then I am not to hear the dreadful confession now?”
“No, not now. I did not mean tonight,” Elfride responded, with a slight decline in the firmness of her voice. “It is not light as you think it—it troubles me a great deal.” Fearing now the effect of her own earnestness, she added forcedly, “Though, perhaps, you may think it light after all.”
“But you have not said when it is to be?”
“Tomorrow morning. Name a time, will you, and bind me to it? I want you to fix an hour, because I am weak, and may otherwise try to get out of it.” She added a little artificial laugh, which showed how timorous her resolution was still.
“Well, say after breakfast—at eleven o’clock.”
“Yes, eleven o’clock. I promise you. Bind me strictly to my word.”
XXVIII
“I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.”
“Miss Swancourt, it is eleven o’clock.”
She was looking out of her dressing-room window on the first floor, and Knight was regarding her from the terrace balustrade, upon which he had been idly sitting for some time—dividing the glances of his eye between the pages of a book in his hand, the brilliant hues of the geraniums and calceolarias, and the open window above-mentioned.
“Yes, it is, I know. I am coming.”
He drew closer, and under the window.
“How are you this morning, Elfride? You look no better for your long night’s rest.”
She appeared at the door shortly after, took his offered arm, and together they walked slowly down the gravel path leading to the river and away under the trees.
Her resolution, sustained during the last fifteen hours, had been to tell the whole truth, and now the moment had come.
Step by step they advanced, and still she did not speak. They were nearly at the end of the walk, when Knight broke the silence.
“Well, what is the confession, Elfride?”
She paused a moment, drew a long breath; and this is what she said:
“I told you one day—or rather I gave you to understand—what was not true. I fancy you thought me to mean I was nineteen my next birthday, but it was my last I was nineteen.”
The moment had been too much for her. Now that the crisis had come, no qualms of conscience, no love of honesty, no yearning to make a confidence and obtain forgiveness with a kiss, could string Elfride up to the venture. Her dread lest he should be
