Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages | Page 6

'Oh, she arst me where I'd been, and I tolder a lotter lies.' Then, with a woman's intuition,
perceiving that this speech jarred, Esther made haste to add, 'She's so dreadful hard on me.
I dursn't tell her I'd been with a gentleman or she'd never have let me out alone again.'
'And at present I suppose you'll be found somewhere about that same stile every
evening?' said Willoughby foolishly, for he really did not much care whether he met her
again or not. Now he was actually in her company, he was surprised at himself for having
given her a whole morning's thought; yet the eagerness of her answer flattered him, too.
'Tonight I can't come, worse luck! It's Thursday, and the shops here close of a Thursday
at five. I'll havter keep aunt company. But tomorrer? I can be there tomorrer. You'll come,
say?'
'Esther!' cried a vexed voice, and the precise, right-minded aunt emerged through a row
of raspberry-bushes; 'whatever are you thinking about, delayin' the gentleman in this
fashion?' She was full of rustic and official civility for 'the gentleman', but indignant with
her niece. 'I don't want none of your London manners down here,' Willoughby heard her
say as she marched the girl off.
He himself was not sorry to be released from Esther's too friendly eyes, and he spent an
agreeable evening over a book, and this time managed to forget her completely.
Though he remembered her first thing next morning, it was to smile wisely and determine
he would not meet her again. Yet by dinner-time the day seemed long; why, after all,

should he not meet her? By tea-time prudence triumphed anew--no, he would not go.
Then he drank his tea hastily and set off for the stile.
Esther was waiting for him. Expectation had given an additional colour to her cheeks, and
her red-brown hair showed here and there a beautiful glint of gold. He could not help
admiring the vigorous way in which it waved and twisted, or the little curls which grew at
the nape of her neck, tight and close as those of a young lamb's fleece. Her neck here was
admirable, too, in its smooth creaminess; and when her eyes lighted up with such evident
pleasure at his coming, how avoid the conviction she was a good and nice girl after all?
He proposed they should go down into the little copse on the right, where they would be
less disturbed by the occasional passer-by. Here, seated on a felled tree-trunk,
Willoughby began that bantering, silly, meaningless form of conversation known among
the 'classes' as flirting. He had but the wish to make himself agreeable, and to while away
the time. Esther, however, misunderstood him.
Willoughby's hand lay palm downwards on his knee, and she, noticing a ring which he
wore on his little finger, took hold of it.
'What a funny ring!' she said; 'let's look?'
To disembarrass himself of her touch, he pulled the ring off and gave it her to examine.
'What's that ugly dark green stone?' she asked.
'It's called a sardonyx.'
'What's it for?' she said, turning it about.
'It's a signet ring, to seal letters with.'
'An' there's a sorter king's head scratched on it, an' some writin' too, only I carnt make it
out?'
'It isn't the head of a king, although it wears a crown,' Willoughby explained, 'but the
head and bust of a Saracen against whom my ancestor of many hundred years ago went to
fight in the Holy Land. And the words cut round it are our motto, "Vertue vauncet",
which means virtue prevails.'
Willoughby may have displayed some accession of dignity in giving this bit of family
history, for Esther fell into uncontrolled laughter, at which he was much displeased. And
when the girl made as though she would put the ring on her own finger, asking, 'Shall I
keep it?' he coloured up with sudden annoyance.
'It was only my fun!' said Esther hastily, and gave him the ring back, but his cordiality
was gone. He felt no inclination to renew the idle-word pastime, said it was time to go,
and, swinging his cane vexedly, struck off the heads of the flowers and the weeds as he
went. Esther walked by his side in complete silence, a phenomenon of which he presently

became conscious. He felt rather ashamed of having shown temper.
'Well, here's your way home,' said he with an effort at friendliness. 'Goodbye; we've had
a nice evening anyhow. It was pleasant down there in the woods, eh?'
He was astonished to see her eyes soften with tears, and to hear the real emotion in her
voice as she answered, 'It was just heaven down there with you until you turned so
funny-like. What had