She could not endure that--she could not face him--so she bent her head a little in recognition of his presence and stepped past him, out along the river-bank.
He looked after her, wondering what he could have said.
She wondered, too, and her wonder grew that instead of self-pity, repugnance, and deep dread, she should feel such a divine relief from the terror that had possessed her.
Now at least she knew the worst. This was the man!
She strove to place him, to recall his face. She could not. All along she had pictured Crawford as an older man. And this broad-shouldered, tanned young fellow was Crawford, after all! Where could her eyes have been? How absurd that her indifference should have so utterly blinded her!
She stood a moment on the lawn, closing her eyes.
Oh, now she had no difficulty in recalling his face--in fact the difficulty was to shut it out, for it was before her eyes, open or shut--it was before her when she entered her bedroom and sank into a cushioned chair by the breezy window. And she took her burning cheeks in both hands and rested her elbows on her knees.
Truly terror had fled. It shamed her to find herself thanking God that her fate was to lie in the keeping of this young man. Yet it was natural, too, for the child had nigh died of horror, though the courage of the Castles had held her head high in the presence of the inevitable. And now suddenly into her gray and hopeless future, peopled by the phantoms of an old man, stepped a living, smiling young fellow, with gentle manners and honest speech, and a quick courtesy which there was no mistaking.
She had no mother--nobody to talk to--so she had long ago made a confidante of her own reflection in the looking-glass. And to the mirror she now went, meeting the reflected eyes shyly, yet smiling with friendly sympathy:
"Silly! to frighten yourself! It is all over now. He's young and tall and sunburned. I don't think he knows a great deal--but don't be frightened, he is not a bit dreadful, ... only ... it is a pity, ... but I suppose he was in love with me, ... and, after all, it doesn't matter, ... only I am ... sorry ... for him.... If he had only cared for a girl who could love him!... I don't suppose I could, ... ever!... But I will be very kind to him, ... to make up."
