“What a pity! The bough is spoilt too,” said Margaret. “Why don’t you cut a crook like Valentine’s?” She went towards Valentine’s bush, somewhat surprised at the vehemence of Geoffrey’s manner.
Geoffrey took his knife and ran into the bushes to cut another crook. Hardly had he disappeared in the thickets when he called to her.
“Margaret, Margaret! I have found your glove—you dropped it.”
She went towards the voice; the moment she came near he grasped both her hands tightly. There was no glove, it was a ruse to speak to her.
“You seem to prefer his society to mine,” he said, in a low, hard tone.
“What do you mean?” Her glance and surprised expression reproached him for his harshness. He hated himself for his next words, and yet he uttered them; jealousy is cruel, and drove him on even against his better mind.
“I mean that you play double—first with me and then with him.”
Now this was not only positively untrue, but in the worst possible taste; had he been cool he would never have said it; as it was he instantly repented. She stood before him silent, all the blood gone from her cheek in the extremity of her indignation, unable to speak. Then she drew her hands away, and her breath came in short quick sobs.
“No, no, I did not mean it.” He tried to take her hand again, but she fled swiftly among the brake fern and the thickets seeking May. He stood bewildered at his own folly; then his anger was redoubled against Valentine instead of against himself. A minute or two afterwards he heard a slight cry, as if caused by pain, and immediately went towards it, but in a dazed kind of way. Valentine was swifter.
As Margaret ran between the bramble bushes and the nut-tree stoles, winding round the tangled masses of fern, and increasing her pace as the full significance of Geoffrey’s insinuation became apparent to her, she was heedless of her footsteps, and so caught her foot in a trailing bine of honeysuckle, and fell on one knee. In falling she instinctively grasped at the nearest bough, and thereby did the mischief; for a briar was twisted round it, and a great hooked thorn ran deep into her thumb. The sharp sudden pain caused her cry. Valentine was at her side in a moment. He saw the thorn, which had broken away from the briar and was fixed in the wound.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “Let me take it out.”
A tiny red globule of blood oozed from the white and polished skin, contrasting so sweetly in colour that he actually paused half a second to admire before he drew it.
“Quick, please,” she said.
He drew it tenderly, and another larger crimson drop welled up, and stood on the delicate white thumb. “It is out.”
“You are sure the point is not left in?” He bent over to examine more carefully. The sunbeams lit up her beautiful hand; temptation overcame him and he kissed it, and the crimson drop stained his lip.
“Sir!” She angrily snatched it away. At the same moment she saw Geoffrey looking through the parted bushes behind Valentine, who did not know he was so near.
“A moment!” cried Valentine, in the flood of his passion. “Listen. I love—”
But she rushed from him. Valentine followed her. Geoffrey let the bushes come together, and Valentine did not see him. Margaret went towards May’s merry laugh, which she could hear not far off.
“May! May!”
“Here I am—by the oak.”
Then Felix, knowing his tête-à-tête with May was almost at an end, snatched a kiss.
“I will go up to the mill again,” said he. “I will succeed this time.”
“Beware of the blackthorn,” laughed May, and was very innocently engaged looking at a sprig of oak with three young acorns on it when Margaret came.
“I am glad I have found you.”
“You have torn your sleeve!”
“In the briars—see my thumb.”
“Aphrodite has pricked her hand instead of her foot this time,” said Felix. “We shall see a new flower in the spring. Let me bind it up?” and he wrapped May’s handkerchief round it. Then Geoffrey and Valentine came, apart and yet together.
“I think it is time to return home,” said May, guessing at once from the expression of their faces and Margaret’s manner that something was wrong.
“Yes, I think so too,” said Margaret. “We have plenty of nuts.”
The joy of the day was over; so easily can a few jarring words cloud the loveliest sky and darken the sweetest landscape. They left the wood and returned to Greene Ferne. As they approached the house a labouring man advanced and spoke to Margaret.
“Be this yourn, miss?” he said, and offered her the lost earring. “I found un on the Down by the Cave, as you and measter here,” (looking at Geoffrey), “thuck night—”
“Wait a moment,” said Margaret, in confusion, for the night adventure had been carefully kept secret from all but Mrs. Estcourt. “I will come to you in a moment.”
Valentine heard the man’s words, and noted his reference to Geoffrey. Instantly his jealousy was aroused—here was something secret. What had they to do with the Cave at night? Nor was Margaret’s halting explanation, that she had dropped it while riding, satisfactory to him. Altogether the situation was constrained. Both Valentine and Geoffrey stayed at the house as late as they could purposely, but neither found an opportunity of speaking alone with Margaret. When they left Greene Ferne the two old friends at once took different roads.
Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and overtook an old woman of the working class, who was groaning and mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand. As he came up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated his pace to hers.
“You seem to have a heavy load,” he said. In the dusk the old hag either did not recognise him,
