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"Very well, then: I love you; I will." "Mavis!" he cried. "More, I'll prove it. You asked me to stay here with you. I refused. I love you I trust you. Do with me as you will." "Mavis!" "I distrusted you. I did wrong, I atone." The Sunday week after Mavis' meeting with Perigal at Dippenham, she left the train at Paddington a few minutes after six in the evening.
She reflected that, by all the laws of justice, Perigal should have appreciated to the full the treasure of love and passion which she had poured out so lavishly at his feet. Perigal, all unconscious of the way in which Mavis regarded him, went out of his way to pay her attention.
The calm of the still water inclined her to sadness. She idled along the towpath, plucking carelessly at the purple vetch which bordered the canal in luxuriant profusion. More than once, she was possessed by the idea that someone was following her. Then she became aware that Perigal was also idling along the towpath some way behind her.
Mavis did not trouble to consider what relation to Perigal the hotel people believed her to be. Her one concern was to discover his intentions with regard to the complication which had arisen in her life. She ordered tea. While it was being got ready, she sat by the newly-lit fire, a prey to gloomy thoughts. The pain in her face had, in a measure, abated.
Perigal caught nothing, a fact that caused Mavis to sympathise with his bad luck. "Next time you'll do all the catching," she said. "You mean you'll fish with me again?" "Why shouldn't I?" "Really, with me?" "I like fish for breakfast," she said, as she turned from the ardour of his glance.
When Mavis got back, she learned that the morning post had brought an invitation for the Devitts and herself for a dinner that Major Perigal was giving in two weeks' time. Major Perigal, also, wrote privately to Mavis, urging her to give him the honour of her company; he assured her that his son would not be present.
Conversely, when she did not hear from Melkbridge for some days, she would be cheerful and light-hearted, when she would spend glad half-hours in reading the advertisements of houses to let and deciding which would suit her when she was married to Perigal.
Then, to her unspeakable relief, he reappeared, much exhausted, but holding out of the water a bedraggled and all but drowned Jill. "Bravo! bravo!" cried Mavis. "Give me a hand, or have Jill!" gasped Perigal. Mavis put one foot in the punt in order to take Jill. She held her beloved friend for a moment against her heart, to put her on the floor of the punt and extend a helping hand to Perigal.
One summer afternoon, while Harold rested indoors, Mavis gave Perigal tea beneath the shade of a witch-elm on the lawn. She was looking particularly alluring; if she were at all doubtful of this fact, the admiration expressed in Perigal's eyes would have reassured her.
"Why was it," she asked herself, "that her lot had not been definitely thrown in with Windebank before she had met with Charles Perigal? Why?" Such was her resentment at the ordering of events, that she set her teeth and banged her clenched fist upon the arm of her chair. At that moment the crippled man wheeled himself past the house on his self-propelled tricycle.
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