And she kissed her little de Brézé, who seemed to have undergone a perfectly natural _crise de neuf_, being so much in love, and patted her on the shoulder. “Take an old woman’s advice, my pet. If you’ve won that man, keep him. He’ll live to thank you for it one of these days.”
And finally, when Lola slipped into the twilight in her silver frock, there didn’t seem to be a single cloud in the sky. Only an evening star. What Lady Cheyne had said she believed because she wanted to believe it, because this Great Romance was only three days old and hope had been so long deferred.—She stopped in the old garden and picked a rose and pulled its thorns off so that she might give it to Fallaray, and she lingered for a moment taking in the scents and the quiet sounds of that most lovely evening,—more lovely and more unclouded even than that other one, which was locked in her memory. And then she went along the path through the corner of a wood. A rabbit disappeared into the undergrowth, but the fairies were not out yet, and there was no one to spy. Was happiness so cheap that she could throw it away,—his and her own? “If you’ve won that man, keep him.” She danced all the rest of the way and over the side road to the gate in the wall,—early, after all, by half an hour. She would wait outside until she heard Fallaray’s quick step and watch the star. “I’ll get him to take me away,” she thought. “There are beautiful places to go to, and he never will be missed.”
She turned quickly, hearing some one on the road. She saw a car drawn up a little distance away, and a man come swinging towards her.
“Madame de Brézé,” he said, standing bareheaded, “my name is Lytham. May I ask you to be so kind as to give me ten minutes?”
“Twenty,” she answered, with the smile that she had flashed at Chalfont that night at the Savoy. “I have just that much to spare.”
“Thank you.” But now that he was there, after all his strategy, after saying good-by to Fallaray, driving all the way down the hill from Whitecross and up again into that side road, he didn’t know how to begin, or where. This girl! God,—how disordering a quality of sex! No wonder she had shattered poor old Fallaray.
“Shall we walk along the lane? It turns a little way up and you can see the cross cut in the hill.”