* * * *
*
And now a midsummer sun was rising over Oxford.
The last carriage had rumbled through the streets;
the last merry group of black-coated men, and girls
in thin shoes and opera-cloaks had vanished. The
summer dawn held the whole beautiful and silenced
city in its peace.
Constance, in her dressing-gown, sat at the open window,
looking out over the dewy garden, and vaguely conscious
of its scents as one final touch of sweetness in a
whole of pleasure which was still sending its thrill
through all her pulses.
At last, she found pen and paper on her writing-table,
and wrote an instruction for Annette upon it.
* * * *
*
“Please send early for the horses. They
should be here at a quarter to nine. Call me
at eight. Tell Aunt Ellen that I have gone for
a ride, and shall be back by eleven. It was quite
a nice ball.”
* * * *
*
Then, with a silent laugh at the last words, she took
the sheet of paper, stole noiselessly out of her room,
and up the stairs to Annette’s room, where she
pushed the message under the door. Annette had
not been well the day before, and Connie had peremptorily
forbidden her to sit up.
The day was still young in Lathom Woods. A wood-cutter
engaged in cutting coppice on the wood’s eastern
skirts, hearing deep muffled sounds from “Tom”
clock-tower, borne to him from Oxford on the light
easterly breeze, stopped to count the strokes.
Ten o’clock.
He straightened himself, wiped the sweat from his
brow, and was immediately aware of certain other sounds
approaching from the wood itself. Horses—at
a walk. No doubt the same gentleman and lady who
had passed him an hour earlier, going in a contrary
direction.
He watched them as they passed him again, repeating
his reflection that they were a “fine-lookin’
couple”—no doubt sweethearts.
What else should bring a young man and a young woman
riding in Lathom Woods at that time in the morning?
“Never seed ’em doin’ it before,
anyways.”
Connie threw the old man a gracious “Good morning!”—to
which he guardedly responded, looking full at her,
as he stood leaning on his axe.
“I wonder what the old fellow is thinking about
us!” she said lightly, when they had moved forward.
Then she flushed, conscious that the remark had been
ill-advised.
Falloden, who was sitting erect and rather sombre,
his reins lying loosely on his horse’s neck,
said slowly—
“He is probably thinking all sorts of foolish
things, which aren’t true. I wish they
were.”
Connie’s eyes were shining with a suppressed
excitement.
“He supposes at any rate we have had a good
time, and in fact—we haven’t.
Is that what you mean?”
“If you like to put it so.”
