The others, especially the two young men, exchanged furtive glances. Willie pressed Charley’s arm with a whisper, ‘Keep it up, old fellow!’ Poor curate! he looked piteously at the girl whom he had not had the courage to try for. Would her cheeks have taken that lovely flush, her eye got that anxious, nervous brightness for him? Was it all a question of pluck, and who should be the first to speak? He watched her going back to the house, across the flower garden, with his lips in an unconscious foolish gape of self-renunciation and tender pity and regret. But happily that rich brown beard of his hid the imbecility of this pathetic simple gaze. And then he turned with sober resolution to the game. He cared for nothing any more now that Anne had gone. But an Englishman must play his game out whatever happens; though heaven and earth should melt away. Nobody suspected her, nobody dreamt what Anne was about to do. That she should do anything that was not open and manifest entered into no one’s idea of her. She had always been mistress of herself and all her ways, and had never quailed before the face of man. Did she feel guilty now when she thus appeared to accept the advice offered to her--appeared to consent to take shelter from the sun, and went back to the house to lie down, or take a quiet book, as was recommended? Anne was a great deal too much occupied with her own thoughts and plans to feel any of those little guilts yet. She was scarcely conscious of what she herself felt and thought. She had to carry the report of the morning to the other person, who was as much concerned as she was in it; to tell him everything, to know what he had to say, to consult with him as to what they were to do. With all this in her heart, a flood of thought, rising and falling, like waves of the sea, is it possible that she could think of what the others would say, or even of the novel aspect of her subterfuge and evasion? She could think of nothing about them, but of how to get free, to be delivered from her companions. To see him was necessary, indispensable. She had never permitted it to be supposed that she would not see him, or suffered anything to be drawn from her which could imply an intention of giving him up. Her father had said nothing on this subject. There had been neither condition nor promise. But still it was no doubt contrary to Anne’s character, as it was to high honour and sincerity, that she should allow it to be supposed that she was returning to the house on account of her headache, when her intention was to go out another way and meet her lover. When she thought of it afterwards the flush of shame which came over her ran from head to foot; but at the present moment she was entirely unmoved by it. The idea did not so much as cross the threshold of her mind.