"Oh! And what DID you think?"

"I thought you would have dark eyes, and Venetian red hair, and not be
quite so tall. Of course, I haven't any imagination."

They were at the door again when the girl said that, and the hall light
was falling on her; her slip of a white figure showed clear. Young--how
young she looked! Everything she said--so young!

And Anna murmured: "And you are--more than I thought, too."

Just then the men came out from the dining-room; her husband with the
look on his face that denoted he had been well listened to; Squire
Trusham laughing as a man does who has no sense of humour; Gordy having
a curly, slightly asphyxiated air; and the boy his pale, brooding look,
as though he had lost touch with his surroundings. He wavered towards
her, seemed to lose himself, went and sat down by the old governess. Was
it because he did not dare to come up to her, or only because he saw the
old lady sitting alone? It might well be that.

And the evening, so different from what she had dreamed of, closed in.
Squire Trusham was gone in his high dog-cart, with his famous mare whose
exploits had entertained her all through dinner. Her candle had been
given her; she had said good-night to all but Mark. What should she
do when she had his hand in hers? She would be alone with him in that
grasp, whose strength no one could see. And she did not know whether to
clasp it passionately, or to let it go coolly back to its owner;
whether to claim him or to wait. But she was unable to help pressing it
feverishly. At once in his face she saw again that troubled look; and
her heart smote her. She let it go, and that she might not see him say
good-night to the girl, turned and mounted to her room.

Fully dressed, she flung herself on the bed, and there lay, her
handkerchief across her mouth, gnawing at its edges.

XV

Mark's nineteenth birthday rose in grey mist, slowly dropped its veil
to the grass, and shone clear and glistening. He woke early. From his
window he could see nothing in the steep park but the soft blue-grey,
balloon-shaped oaks suspended one above the other among the round-topped
boulders. It was in early morning that he always got his strongest
feeling of wanting to model things; then and after dark, when, for want
of light, it was no use. This morning he had the craving badly, and
the sense of not knowing how weighed down his spirit. His drawings,
his models--they were all so bad, so fumbly. If only th