'Rude and unmannerly!' she said to herself, colouring with pique. 'Anybody would think he was in love with that horrid mason instead of with----'
The sentence remained unspoken, though not unthought.
She returned to the porch.
'Is the man you sent for a lazy, sit-still, do-nothing kind of man?' she inquired of her father.
'No,' he said surprised; 'quite the reverse. He is Lord Luxellian's master-mason, John Smith.'
'Oh,' said Elfride indifferently, and returned towards her bleak station, and waited and shivered again. It was a trifle, after all--a childish thing--looking out from a tower and waving a handkerchief. But her new friend had promised, and why should he tease her so? The effect of a blow is as proportionate to the texture of the object struck as to its own momentum; and she had such a superlative capacity for being wounded that little hits struck her hard.
It was not till the end of half an hour that two figures were seen above the parapet of the dreary old pile, motionless as bitterns on a ruined mosque. Even then Stephen was not true enough to perform what he was so courteous to promise, and he vanished without making a sign.
He returned at midday. Elfride looked vexed when unconscious that his eyes were upon her; when conscious, severe. However, her attitude of coldness had long outlived the coldness itself, and she could no longer utter feigned words of indifference.
'Ah, you weren't kind to keep me waiting in the cold, and break your promise,' she said at last reproachfully, in tones too low for her father's powers of hearing.
'Forgive, forgive me!' said Stephen with dismay. 'I had forgotten--quite forgotten! Something prevented my remembering.'
'Any further explanation?' said Miss Capricious, pouting.
He was silent for a few minutes, and looked askance.
'None,' he said, with the accent of one who concealed a sin.