“I detest anything that has to do with gratitude,” Wilfrid appended, “pray give me none.  Why did you go away with Captain Gambier?”

“I was very fond of him,” she replied unhesitatingly, but speaking as it were with numbed lips.  “I wanted to tell him, to thank him and hold his hand.  I told him of my promise.  He spoke to me a moment in the garden, you know.  He said he was leaving to go to London early, and would wait for me in the carriage:  then we might talk.  He did not wish to talk to me in the garden.”

“And you went with him in the carriage, and told him you were so grateful?”

“Yes; but men do not like us to be grateful.”

“So, he said he would do all sorts of things on condition that you were not grateful?”

“He said—­yes:  I forget:  I do forget!  How can I tell what he said?” Emilia added piteously.  “I feel as if I had been emptied out of a sack!”

Wilfrid was pierced with laughter; and then the plainspoken simile gave him a chilling sensation while he was rising to the jealous pitch.

“Did he talk about taking you to Italy?  Put your head into the sack, and think!”

“Yes,” she answered blandly, an affirmative that caused him some astonishment, for he had struck at once to the farthest end of his suspicions.

“He feels as I do about the Italian Schools,” said Emilia.  “He wishes me to owe my learning to him.  He says it will make him happy, and I thought so too.”  She threw in a “then.”

Wilfrid looked moodily into the opposite hedge.

“Did he name the day for your going?” he asked presently, little anticipating another “Yes”:  but it came:  and her rather faltering manner showed her to be conscious too that the word was getting to be a black one to him.

“Did you say you would go?”

“I did.”

Question and answer crossed like two rapiers.

Wilfrid jumped up.

“The smell of this tree’s detestable,” he said, glancing at the shadowing hawthorn.

Emilia rose quietly, plucked a flower off the tree, and put it in her bosom.

Their way was down a green lane and across long meadow-paths dim in the moonlight.  A nightingale was heard on this side and on that.  Overhead they had a great space of sky with broken cloud full of the glory of the moon.  The meadows dipped to a brook, slenderly spanned by a plank.  Then there was an ascent through a cornfield to a copse.  Rounding this they had sight of Brookfield.  But while they were yet at the brook, Wilfrid said, “When is it you’re going to Italy?”

In return he had an eager look, so that he was half-ashamed to add, “With Captain Gambier, I mean.”  He was suffering, and by being brutal he expected to draw balm on himself; nor was he deceived.

Emilia just then gave him her hand to be led over, and answered, as she neared him, “I am never to leave you.”