Tempest says he doesn't
even allow him to pick his own flowers. Let's join the others, and escape
from the wrath to come."
It was pluckily done, and when they rejoined the rest of the party few
would have suspected from her insouciant manner that she and Eliot Coventry
had been engaged upon anything more heart-searching than a botanical
discussion.
But that night Ann lay wakeful until the pale streamers of dawn fanned out
across the sky, while Eliot Coventry, pacing restlessly to and fro in his
silent study, gibed at himself with a savage irony because, though he had
successfully steeled himself to meet, unmoved, the woman who had violated
all his trust in her, a whiff of the sweet, heady scent of heliotrope had
flooded his whole being with a resurgent bitterness so deep and so
indomitable that it had utterly submerged his dawning faith.
CHAPTER XVIII
A BATTLE OF WILLS
One man sows and another reaps, and sometimes the harvest is a curiously
unexpected one for the reaper. Coventry had sown harshness and distrust,
and Brett reaped a harvest of kindness and favour in the quarter where he
least anticipated it.
Ann, exasperated by his cool impertinence at their last meeting, had merely
vouchsafed him the briefest of greetings when they had met at the rectory
party, and had consistently avoided him for the remainder of the afternoon.
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