“Doubtless. How can you be so fond of finery? I believe you are corrupting me into a taste for it. I used to hate every such thing before I knew you.”
“I like ornaments, because I want people to admire what you possess, and envy you, and say, ‘I wish I was he.’ ”
“I suppose I ought not to object after that. And how much longer are you going to look in there at yourself?”
“Until you are tired of holding me? Oh, I want to ask you something.” And she turned round. “Now tell truly, won’t you? What colour of hair do you like best now?”
Knight did not answer at the moment.
“Say light, do!” she whispered coaxingly. “Don’t say dark, as you did that time.”
“Light-brown, then. Exactly the colour of my sweetheart’s.”
“Really?” said Elfride, enjoying as truth what she knew to be flattery.
“Yes.”
“And blue eyes, too, not hazel? Say yes, say yes!”
“One recantation is enough for today.”
“No, no.”
“Very well, blue eyes.” And Knight laughed, and drew her close and kissed her the second time, which operations he performed with the carefulness of a fruiterer touching a bunch of grapes so as not to disturb their bloom.
Elfride objected to a second, and flung away her face, the movement causing a slight disarrangement of hat and hair. Hardly thinking what she said in the trepidation of the moment, she exclaimed, clapping her hand to her ear—
“Ah, we must be careful! I lost the other earring doing like this.”
No sooner did she realise the significant words than a troubled look passed across her face, and she shut her lips as if to keep them back.
“Doing like what?” said Knight, perplexed.
“Oh, sitting down out of doors,” she replied hastily.
XXIX
“Care, thou canker.”
It is an evening at the beginning of October, and the mellowest of autumn sunsets irradiates London, even to its uttermost eastern end. Between the eye and the flaming West, columns of smoke stand up in the still air like tall trees. Everything in the shade is rich and misty blue.
Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt and Elfride are looking at these lustrous and lurid contrasts from the window of a large hotel near London Bridge. The visit to their friends at St. Leonards is over, and they are staying a day or two in the metropolis on their way home.
Knight spent the same interval of time in crossing over to Brittany by way of Jersey and St. Malo. He then passed through Normandy, and returned to London also, his arrival there having been two days later than that of Elfride and her parents.
So the evening of this October day saw them all meeting at the above-mentioned hotel, where they had previously engaged apartments. During the afternoon Knight had been to his lodgings at Richmond to make a little change in the nature of his baggage; and on coming up again there was never ushered by a bland waiter into a comfortable room a happier man than Knight when shown to where Elfride and her stepmother were sitting after a fatiguing day of shopping.
Elfride looked none the better for her change: Knight was as brown as a nut. They were soon engaged by themselves in a corner of the room. Now that the precious words of promise had been spoken, the young girl had no idea of keeping up her price by the system of reserve which other more accomplished maidens use. Her lover was with her again, and it was enough: she made her heart over to him entirely.
Dinner was soon despatched. And when a preliminary round of conversation concerning their doings since the last parting had been concluded, they reverted to the subject of tomorrow’s journey home.
“That enervating ride through the myrtle climate of South Devon—how I dread it tomorrow!” Mrs. Swancourt was saying. “I had hoped the weather would have been cooler by this time.”
“Did you ever go by water?” said Knight.
“Never—by never, I mean not since the time of railways.”
“Then if you can afford an additional day, I propose that we do it,” said Knight. “The Channel is like a lake just now. We should reach Plymouth in about forty hours, I think, and the boats start from just below the bridge here” (pointing over his shoulder eastward).
“Hear, hear!” said the vicar.
“It’s an idea, certainly,” said his wife.
“Of course these coasters are rather tubby,” said Knight. “But you wouldn’t mind that?”
“No: we wouldn’t mind.”
“And the saloon is a place like the fishmarket of a ninth-rate country town, but that wouldn’t matter?”
“Oh dear, no. If we had only thought of it soon enough, we might have had the use of Lord Luxellian’s yacht. But never mind, we’ll go. We shall escape the worrying rattle through the whole length of London tomorrow morning—not to mention the risk of being killed by excursion trains, which is not a little one at this time of the year, if the papers are true.”
Elfride, too, thought the arrangement delightful; and accordingly, ten o’clock the following morning saw two cabs crawling round by the Mint, and between the preternaturally high walls of Nightingale Lane towards the river side.
The first vehicle was occupied by the travellers in person, and the second brought up the luggage, under the supervision of Mrs. Snewson, Mrs. Swancourt’s maid—and for the last fortnight Elfride’s also; for although the younger lady had never been accustomed to any such attendant at robing times, her stepmother forced her into a semblance of familiarity with one when they were away from home.
Presently wagons, bales, and smells of all descriptions increased to such an extent that the advance of the cabs was at the slowest possible rate. At intervals it was necessary to halt entirely, that the heavy vehicles unloading in front might be moved aside, a feat which was not accomplished without a deal of swearing and noise. The vicar put his head out of the window.
“Surely there must be
