"No;--in my habit and hat. It will be the hardest thing, after all! I ought to have insisted on going to Holcombe Cross on Friday. The sun is shining now. Surely it cannot freeze."
"It will be uncommonly ill-bred if it does."
But, after all, the hunting was not the main point. The hunting had been only intended as an opportunity; and if that were to be lost,--in which case Lord Rufford would no doubt at once leave Mistletoe,--there was the more need for using the present hour, the more for using even the present minute. Though she had said that the sun was shining, it was the setting sun, and in another half hour the gloom of the evening would be there. Even Lord Rufford would not consent to walk about with her in the dark. "Oh, Lord Rufford," she said, "I did so look forward to your giving me another lead." Then she put her hand upon his arm and left it there.
"It would have been nice," said he, drawing her hand a little on, and remembering as he did so his own picture of himself on the cliff with his sister holding his coat-tails.
"If you could possibly know," she said, "the condition I am in."
"I know that I can trust you. I am sure that I can trust you."
"Oh dear, yes. If you mean about telling, I never tell anything."
"That's what I do mean. You remember that man at your place?"
"Oh dear no! I wish they could change places because then he could give me no more trouble."
"That's wishing him to be dead, whoever he is."
"Yes. Why should he persecute me? I mean that man we were staying with at Bragton."
"Of course I do. Don't you remember your asking me about him, and my telling you that I was not engaged to him?"
"Mamma and this horrid old Duchess here want me to marry him. They've got an idea that he is going to be ambassador at Pekin or something very grand, and they're at me day and night."
"You needn't take him unless you like him."
"They do make me so miserable!" And then she leaned heavily upon his arm. He was a man who could not stand such pressure as this without returning it. Though he were on the precipice, and though he must go over, still he could not stand it. "You remember that night after the ball?"
"And you too had asked me whether I cared for that horrid man."
