Grange remarked both facts, and his moodiness increased. When
Daisy went up to the nursery, he at once followed Muriel into the
drawing-room. She was standing by the window when he entered, a slim,
straight figure in unrelieved black; but though she must have heard
him, she neither spoke nor turned her head.
Grange closed the door and came softly forward. There was an unwonted
air of resolution about him that made him look almost grim. He reached
her side and stood there silently. The wind had fallen, and the sky
was starry.
After a brief silence Muriel dropped the blind and looked at him.
There was something of interrogation in her glance.
"Shall we go into the garden?" she suggested. "It is so warm."
He fell in at once with the proposal. "You will want a cloak," he
said. "Can I fetch you one?"
"Oh, thanks! Anything will do. I believe there's one of Daisy's in the
hall."
She moved across the room quickly, as one impatient to escape from a
confined space. Grange followed her. He was not smoking as usual. They
went out together into the warm darkness, and passed side by side
down the narrow path that wound between the bare flower-beds. It was
a wonderful night. Once as they walked there drifted across them a
sudden fragrance of violets.
They reached at length a rustic gate that led into the doctor's
meadow, and here with one consent they stopped.
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