‘Are you ready, Prim?’

Primrose nervously put on her bonnet, which she had with nervous unrest taken off; and Rollo offered his arm to Wych Hazel.

‘Let me go by myself,’ she said—­again not roughly, but as if she could not help it.  ‘I am not going to run away.’

‘In that case it is certainly not the arm of a jailor,’ said he, stooping down by her and smiling.

But the words, or the look, or something about them, very nearly got the better of Wych Hazel’s defences, and her eyes flushed with tears.

‘No—­no,’ she said under her breath.  ‘I will follow.  Go on.’

‘Certainly not me,’ he answered.  ’Go you with Prim, and I will follow.’

One before and one behind!—­thought the girl to herself, comparing the manner of her entrance.  She went on, not with Prim, but swiftly ahead of her, and put herself in the carriage, as she had brought herself out of the house.  Prim followed.  Rollo mounted the box and took the reins, and, having fresh horses from the inn, they drove off at a smart pace.  And Hazel, laying one hand on the sill of the open window, leaned her head against the frame, and so, wrapped in her black lace, sat looking out, with eyes that never seemed to waver.  Into the white moonshine,—­which soon would give way before the twilight ‘which should be dawn and a to-morrow.’

For a long time Primrose bore this, thinking hard too on her part.  For she had much to think of, in connection with both her companions.  She was hurt for Rollo; she was grieved for Wych Hazel; was there anything personal and private to herself in her vexation at the needlessness of the trouble which was affecting them?  If there were, Primrose did not look at it much.  But it seemed very strange in her eyes that any one should rebel against what was, to her, the honey sweetness of Dane’s authority.  Strange that anything he disliked, should be liked by anybody that had the happiness of his care.  And strange beyond strangeness, that this girl should slight such words and looks as he bestowed upon her.  Primrose knew how deep the meaning of them was; she knew how great the grace of them was; could it be possible Wych Hazel did not know?  One such word and look would have made her happy for days; upon a few of them she could have lived a year.  So it seemed to her.  She did not wish that they were hers; she did not repine that they were another’s; she only thought these things.  But there were other thoughts that came up, as a sigh dismissed the foregoing.

‘Hazel!—­’ she ventured gently, when half of the way was done.

Hazel’s thoughts had been so far away that she started.

‘What?’ she said hastily.

‘May I talk to you, just a little bit?’

‘O yes,—­certainly.  Anybody may do anything to me.’  But she kept her position unchanged.  ‘I am listening, Prim.’

‘Hazel, dear, are you quite sure you are doing right?’