She laughed, blushed a little, and began to coil up her hair over the curve of her long, brown neck.
“How are they treating you in Pevensel?” he made haste to ask.
Her expression changed suddenly from frankness to rebellion. Jeffray, who was studying her with a secret sense of delight, marked the hardening of her red mouth, the gleam in her fierce, far-sighted eyes. He had forgotten Miss Jilian completely for the moment, and the delicate and highly civilized sentiments that had made him throw his liberty at her feet.
“Tell me what your trouble is,” he asked her.
“They tried to force me into it. Mother Ursula was with them till Dan tried his bullying, and then she held him and his father off.”
The expression on Richard’s amiable face contradicted its habitual shinings towards sweetness.
“He’s as bad as Dan,” she said, with a snarl. “I hate—hate them both.”
“They can’t marry you against your will.”
There was a look almost suggestive of fear on her face for the moment, despite its spirit of defiance. She glanced round her swiftly, and drew closer to Jeffray.
Jeffray understood her meaning of a sudden. His sensitive face grew strangely stern and thoughtful, and there was a tightness about his mouth, a steadiness in his eyes that would have puzzled Mr. Lancelot Hardacre.
“You keep the pistols by you?” he asked, quietly.
Bess pointed to the rock where her red cloak lay.
“See, one is there,” she said. “They are the best friends I have in Pevensel. I look to the priming every day.”
Jeffray’s usually smooth brow was still knotted in thought.
“I wonder if I could help you, Bess,” he said.
She gazed at him curiously, with one hand at her throat.
She glanced round her rapidly as though accustomed to fear what the woods might conceal. The sun was low in the west and the forest-clad valley full of golden mist. She took her cloak and pistol from the rock, and pointed to a path that branched off from the main ride into a larch-wood, telling Jeffray that they could reach the Beacon Rock heath by the path.
Thus with the shadows of the twilight stealing over the woods, and the birds piping lustily in every thicket, Bess and Richard Jeffray wandered through Pevensel together, looking with questioning youth into each other’s eyes. Bess began to tell him of the memories that stood like frail ghosts on the threshold of her forest life. She told him of the flitting fancies of other days, of the faces and scenes she but half remembered. Jeffray, impressed by her eager intensity of belief, reacted to the many suggestions her words inspired. He watched her as she walked beside him, tall, lissome, and convincing, her looks eloquent towards the proving of her childish memories. Jeffray had seen what country hoydens were worth in the matter of charm and of beauty, and had discovered pretty milkmaids to be a myth. Bess was as different from any Sussex Blowzelinda as a stately cypress from a dwarf oak outcrowded in some sodden wood.