The Vision of Desire Part 28

CHAPTER XVI

DREAM-FLOWERS

The news of Mrs. Hilyard's visit to the Cottage soon spread abroad, and the following day, when she was allowed downstairs for the first time, Ann held quite a small reception.

Lady Susan, escorted by Forrester and the ubiquitous Tribes of Israel, was the first to arrive. Afterwards came the rector and Miss Caroline, and even Mrs. Carberry, a somewhat consequential dame whose husband was Master of the Heronsfoot Foxhounds, and who had hitherto held rather aloof from anything approaching intimacy and merely paid a stately first call on the Cottage people, unbent sufficiently to take tea informally with the invalid.

She did not, however, bring her daughter, a girl of Ann's own age, with her. A shrewd, rather calculating woman, she had fully recognised the possible attraction that might lie in Robin's steady, grey-green eyes. And since her plans for her daughter's future most certainly did not include marriage with any one so unimportant--and probably hard up--as a young estate agent, she judged it wiser to run no risks. She extracted from Ann a full, true, and particular account of her bathing adventure, and the information that it had been the owner of Heronsmere who had come to the rescue did not appear to afford her much pleasure.

"He's not here this afternoon?" She glanced quickly round the party of friends who had gathered in the pretty, low-ceiled room. "But I suppose he has called already to make sure that you're safe and sound?" There was a kind of acrid sweetness in her tones.

"Oh, no," replied Ann, sensing the woman's latent antagonism. "Why should he?"

"Why, indeed?" Mrs. Carberry laughed dryly. "After all, he can't really feel very grateful to you for procuring him a soaking, can he? A man does so hate to be made a fool of."

"I really don't know what he felt," retorted Ann sweetly, but with heightened colour. "You see, I was unconscious."

"Just as well for you, perhaps." Again that unpleasant little dry laugh.

"One feels so _draggled_, doesn't one, with one's hair all lank and wet?"

Miss Caroline's maidenly mind seemed chiefly oppressed with the immodesty of being rescued from drowning by a member of the other s.e.x.

"How unfortunate it was that Mrs. Hilyard couldn't reach you!" she said, when she got Ann to herself for a few moments. "You must have felt very uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable?" Ann's clear eyes met Miss Caroline's blue bead ones inquiringly.

"_Dreadfully_ uncomfortable, I should think"--with sympathy. "You--you had nothing on, I suppose"--lowering her voice impressively--"but your bathing-gown?"

"Nothing at all," answered Ann, maintaining her gravity with difficulty.

"One hasn't usually, you know--to go into the water."

"But you had to be carried _out_ of the water, hadn't you? You must have found it most embarra.s.sing! Most embarra.s.sing!"

"I don't think I did," said Ann.

"Not?"--chidingly. "Oh, Miss Lovell, I can't believe that! Any nice-minded girl--I'm sure, if it had been me I should have fainted out of pure shame at finding myself in a man's arms--without a _peignoir_!"

"Well, that was just it, you see. I _had_ fainted. So"--the corners of her mouth trembling in spite of herself--"I wasn't able to put on my _peignoir_."

"I see." Miss Caroline looked slightly relieved. "Then you didn't really know any more about it than one does when having a tooth out under gas?

What a good thing! Dear me! What a good thing! And I'm sure Mr. Coventry will try to forget all about it. Any gentleman would. Really, such a--a contretemps makes one feel one ought almost to be fully clothed for bathing, doesn't it?"

She hopped up like a hungry little bird that has just been fed and flitted across the room to talk to Mrs. Carberry, and Ann wondered dryly if she were confiding in the M.F.H.'s wife particulars of the kind of costume she deemed suitable to the occasion when drowning.

Brett Forrester took her vacated seat at Ann's side.

"I'm really very much obliged to Coventry," he remarked, by way of opening the conversation.

"Are you?" she replied innocently. "What for?"

"Why, for saving you for me, of course. I couldn't possibly have got there in time myself. And I don't like losing my belongings"--placidly.

She stared at him.

"If you're referring to me," she said aloofly, "I'm not your 'belongings.'"

His bright blue eyes flashed over her, and for a moment his face seemed to wake up as he responded swiftly:

"But you will be--some day. So"--with a resumption of his former placidity--"as I said, I'm very much obliged to Coventry for saving you for me."

"Brett, don't be so ridiculous! It isn't even funny to make jokes like that," she answered with some impatience.

He remained quite unperturbed.

"I didn't intend to be funny. And I'm not joking. I'm perfectly serious."

"Then you were never more mistaken in your life."

"Mistaken?"--with childlike inquiry.

"In what you said just now."

Forrester's eyes danced wickedly.

"I say such a lot of things," he complained. "If you can specify which particular thing, now?"

"You know which I mean, perfectly well," protested Ann indignantly. "That I--that you--what you said just now about 'belonging'!" She brought it out with a rush.

"I meant it."

They were alone in the room. The others, conducted by Robin, had all trooped out to inspect what Lady Susan gaily insisted upon referring to as the "Cottage Poultry Farm," and distantly through the open window came the fluttered cackling of the White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds, resentful of this unaccountable intrusion of strangers into their domain.

Brett laid his hand suddenly on Ann's arm and thrust his face near hers.

"I meant it," he repeated, and his voice roughened oddly. "I've meant it ever since the day I found you fast asleep in the hammock."

She drew back a little. The nearness of his arrogant, suddenly pa.s.sionate face to hers filled her with a sense of panic. His eyes were like blue fire, scorching her.

"Don't! Don't be absurd, Brett," she said hastily. "Why--why"--seeking for some good reason to set against his abruptly declared determination--"you hardly know me! Only just on the surface, that is."

"I know all I need to, thank you. I know you're the woman I want to marry.

No"--checking with a gesture the impulsive negative with which she was about to respond--"you needn't bother about refusing me. I'm not asking you to marry me--not at this moment."

Ann took a fresh hold of herself.

"That's just as well," she said, trying to match his coolness with her own.