I must go now. Good-bye! Hallo,
Susie!"
Courtier saw her slide away, and join the little pale adoring figure of
the lodge-keeper's daughter.
The car passed out into the lane.
If Lady Casterley had planned this disclosure, which indeed she had not,
for the impulse had only come over her at the sound of Courtier's laugh,
she could not have, devised one more effectual, for there was deep
down in him all a wanderer's very real distrust, amounting almost
to contempt, of people so settled and done for; as aristocrats or
bourgeois, and all a man of action's horror of what he called puking
and muling. The pursuit of Barbara with any other object but that of
marriage had naturally not occurred to one who had little sense of
conventional morality, but much self-respect; and a secret endeavour
to cut out Harbinger, ending in a marriage whereat he would figure as
a sort of pirate, was quite as little to the taste of a man not
unaccustomed to think himself as good as other people.
He caused the car to deviate up the lane that led to Audrey Noel's,
hating to go away without a hail of cheer to that ship in distress.
She came out to him on the verandah. From the clasp of her hand, thin
and faintly browned--the hand of a woman never quite idle--he felt that
she relied on him to understand and sympathize; and nothing so awakened
the best in Courtier as such mute appeals to his protection.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181