"I understand you've been but a short while resident in our
neighbourhood, Captain Ryecroft?"
"Not quite three months, Miss Wynn. Only a week or two before I had the
pleasure of making your acquaintance."
"Thank you for calling it a pleasure. Not much in the manner, I should
say; but altogether the contrary," she laughs, adding--
"And how do you like our Wye?"
"Who could help liking it?"
"There's been much said of its scenery--in books and newspapers. You
really admire it?"
"I do, indeed." His preference is pardonable under the circumstances.
"I think it the finest in the world."
"What! you such a great traveller! In the tropics too; upon rivers that
run between groves of evergreen trees, and over sands of gold! Do you
really mean that, Captain Ryecroft?"
"Really--truthfully. Why not, Miss Wynn?"
"Because I supposed those grand rivers we read of were all so much
superior to our little Herefordshire stream; in flow of water, scenery,
everything--"
"Nay, not everything!" he says, interruptingly. "In volume of water
they may be; but far from it in other respects. In some it is superior
to them all--Rhine, Rhone, ah! Hippocrene itself!"
His tongue is at length getting loosed.
"What other respects?" she asks.
"The forms reflected in it," he answers hesitatingly.
"Not those of vegetation! Surely our oaks, elms, and poplars cannot be
compared with the tall palms and graceful tree ferns of the tropics?"
"No; not those."
"Our buildings neither, if photography tells truth, which it should.
Those wonderful structures--towers, temples, pagodas--of which it has
given us the _fac similes_--far excel anything we have on the Wye--or
anything in England. Even our Tintern, which we think so very grand,
were but as nothing to them. Isn't that so?"
"True," he says, assentingly. "One must admit the superiority of
Oriental architecture."
"But you've not told me what form our English river reflects, so much to
your admiration!"
He has a fine opportunity for poetical reply. The image is in his
mind--her own--with the word upon his tongue, "woman's." But he shrinks
from giving it utterance. Instead, retreating from the position he had
assumed, he rejoins evasively:--
"The truth is, Miss Wynn, I've had a surfeit of tropical scenery, and
was only too glad once more to feast my eyes on the hill and dale
landscapes of dear old England. I know none to compare with these of
the Wyeside."
"It's very pleasing to hear you say that--to me especially. It's but
natural I should love our beautiful Wye--I, born on its banks, brought
up on them, and, I suppose, likely to--"
"What?" he asks, observing that she has paused in her speech.
"Be buried on them!" she answers, laughingly. She intended to have said
"Stay on them for the rest of my life."
"You'll think that a very grave conclusion," she adds, keeping up the
laugh.
"One at all events very far off--it is to be hoped. An eventuality not
to arise, till after you've passed many long and happy days--whether on
the Wye, or elsewhere."
"Ah! who can tell? The future is a sealed book to all of us."
"Yours need not be--at least as regards its happiness. I think that is
assured."
"Why do you say so, Captain Ryecroft?"
"Because it seems to me, as though you had yourself the making of it."
He saying no more than he thinks; far less. For he believes she could
make fate itself--control it, as she can his. And as he would now
confess to her--is almost on the eve of it--but hindered by recalling
that strange look and sigh sent after Shenstone. His fond fancies, the
sweet dreams he has been indulging in ever since making her
acquaintance, may have been but illusions. She may be playing with him,
as he would with a fish on his hook. As yet, no word of love has passed
her lips. Is there thought of it in her heart--for him?
"In what way? What mean you?" she asks, her liquid eyes turned upon him
with a look of searching interrogation.
The question staggers him. He does not answer it as he would, and again
replies evasively--somewhat confusedly.
"Oh! I only meant, Miss Wynn--that you so young--so--well, with all the
world before you--surely have your happiness in your own hands."
If he knew how much it is in his he would speak more courageously, and
possibly with greater plainness. But he knows not, nor does she tell
him. She, too, is cautiously retentive, and refrains taking advantage
of his words, full of suggestion.
It will need another _seance_--possibly more than one--before the real
confidence can be exchanged between them. Natures like theirs do not
rush into confession as the common kind. With them it is as with the
wooing of eagles.
She simply rejoins:
"I wish it were," adding with a sigh, "Far from it, I fear."
He feels as if he had drifted into a dilemma--brought about by his own
_gaucherie_--from which something seen up the river, on the opposite
side, offers an opportunity to escape--a house. It is the quaint old
habitation of Tudor times. Pointing to it, he says:
"A very odd building, that! If I've been rightly informed, Miss Wynn,
it belongs to a relative of yours?"
"I have a cousin who lives there." The shadow suddenly darkening her
brow, with the slightly explicit rejoinder, tells him he is again on
dangerous ground. He attributes it to the character he has heard of Mr
Murdock. His cousin is evidently disinclined to converse about him.
And she is; the shadow still staying. If she knew what is at that
moment passing within Glyngog--could but hear the conversation carried
on at its dining table--it might be darker. It is dark enough in her
heart, as on her face--possibly from a presentiment.
Ryecroft more than ever embarrassed, feels it a relief when Ellen Lees,
with the Rev Mr Musgrave as her cavalier attendant--they, too,
straying solitarily--approach near enough to be hailed, and invited into
the pavilion.
So the dialogue between the cautious lovers comes to an end--to both of
them unsatisfactory enough. For this day their love must remain
unrevealed; though never man and woman more longed to learn the sweet
secret of each other's heart.
Volume One, Chapter XV.