This Lucy was glad enough to do. If Cecil disliked Sir Harry Otway and Mr. Beebe, what guarantee was there that the people who really mattered to her would escape? For instance, Freddy. Freddy was neither clever, nor subtle, nor beautiful, and what prevented Cecil from saying, any minute, “It would be wrong not to loathe Freddy”? And what would she reply? Further than Freddy she did not go, but he gave her anxiety enough. She could only assure herself that Cecil had known Freddy some time, and that they had always got on pleasantly, except, perhaps, during the last few days, which was an accident, perhaps.
“Which way shall we go?” she asked him.
Nature—simplest of topics, she thought—was around them. Summer Street lay deep in the woods, and she had stopped where a footpath diverged from the high road.
“Are there two ways?”
“Perhaps the road is more sensible, as we’re got up smart.”
“I’d rather go through the wood,” said Cecil, With that subdued irritation that she had noticed in him all the afternoon. “Why is it, Lucy, that you always say the road? Do you know that you have never once been with me in the fields or the wood since we were engaged?”
“Haven’t I? The wood, then,” said Lucy, startled at his queerness, but pretty sure that he would explain later; it was not his habit to leave her in doubt as to his meaning.
She led the way into the whispering pines, and sure enough he did explain before they had gone a dozen yards.
“I had got an idea—I dare say wrongly—that you feel more at home with me in a room.”
“A room?” she echoed, hopelessly bewildered.