"Please stay. It won't take five minutes. Then I can drive you back."
"I can walk."
"I know you can. But--you see--" His keenness and shrewdness went
from him. He was almost embarrassed. "I _was_ going round to see
your sister in the morning. But--I think I'd rather see her to-night.
And--" He was improvising freely now--"I ought, perhaps, to see you
after, as you understand the case. So, if you don't _mind_ coming back
with me--"
She didn't mind. Why should she?
She stayed. She sat in Rowcliffe's chair before his fire and drank his
tea and ate his hot griddle-cakes (she had a healthy appetite, being
young and strong). She talked to him as if she had known him a long
time. All these things he made her do, and when he talked to her he
made her forget what had brought her there; he made her forget Alice
and Mary and her father.
When he left her for a moment she got up, restless and eager to be
gone. And when he came back to her she was standing by the open window
again, looking at the orchard.
Rowcliffe looked at _her_, taking in her tallness, her slenderness,
the lithe and beautiful line of her body, curved slightly backward as
she leaned against the window wall.
Never before and never again, afterwards, never, that was to say, for
any other woman, did Rowcliffe feel what he felt then. Looking back on
it (afterward) he could only describe it as a sense of certainty. It
lacked, surprisingly, the element of surprise.
"You like my north-country orchard?" (He was certain that she did.)