“Amy! Amy!”
No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
“He is in a bad temper,” laughed Siegmund.
“Breakfast is late,” said Helena with contempt.
“Look!” said Siegmund.
An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.
There was a quick sound of women’s low, apologetic voices, overridden by the resentful abuse of the man.
The lovers moved out of hearing.
“Imagine that breakfast table!” said Siegmund.
“I feel,” said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, “as if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.”
“There are many such roosts,” said Siegmund pertinently.
Helena’s cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had fixed itself, bled him
