When they had paced the more secluded walks of the garden some fifteen minutes, speaking of anything but that which was most in Everell’s mind, Georgiana suddenly reverted to the question of his safety. The anxious concern with which she regarded him served to break the spell he had suffered under. Making light of his danger, he showed himself so grateful for her solicitude that a still more encouraging tenderness appeared in her eyes. With love in his looks, and in the touch of his hand upon hers, he burst out with declarations of his happiness in her company, and of his misery in her absence. She made no verbal return for these tributes, but the sweet agitation visible in her face was enough. He was about to venture a similar embrace to that of the day before, when they heard Prudence call, in a low but excited voice, “Oh, mistress, mistress, we shall be discovered!” Georgiana, in alarm, whispered to Everell, “Conceal yourself!—good night!” and fled swiftly to where the maid was watching. Standing perfectly still, Everell heard the two women go up the steps, and soon the sound of their footfalls on the terrace died out. They had returned to the house, then; what had caused the maid to give the alarm, he knew not, for there was no sound to indicate any human presence.
Vexed at this abrupt termination of the interview at the very moment when it seemed about to reward him, he waited in the hope of Georgiana’s return. But the hope was vain, and after two or three hours of diminishing expectancy, he sadly—nay, with heart-burning, grievous sighing, and clenching of teeth—resigned himself to the prospect of another long night and another endless day ere the next meeting. And indeed there was no certainty of the meeting even after that vast interval, for no appointment had been made. But he trusted to her humanity, if he dared not count upon feelings fully reciprocal to his own, to bring her to the garden at the next sunset. If she did not come, he knew not what rash thing he might do.
His reliance upon her compassion was not in vain. She was prompt in appearance when at last the long night and the slow day had passed. Taking pity, perhaps, on his haggard countenance, she was kind from the outset of their interview. Prudence attended, as before, but with instructions to be more certain before crying danger than she had been on the previous evening, when, as Georgiana now told Everell, the maid, in the novelty of her duty, had given the alarm at the mere sound of laughter in the house—the laughter of Foxwell and his visitors over their wine and cards.