"You surprise me, Mr. Featherstone."
"You are surprised only because you are so adorably innocent. You are on the threshold of life."
"I find it rather irritating when people stress my youth. I am not so very young."
"Indeed not. You are, as I know, verging on seventeen. When is it? The glorious twenty-first of May?"
"How did you know?"
"What is it they say? A little bird ..."
"The bird, I imagine, was not so little. It must have been Miss Gilmour."
"Miss Gilmour no longer. The happy Mrs. Mallory. And you should not be irritated by appreciation of your youth. Youth is the most precious gift the gods bestow. Unfortunately it does not last. Very sad, is it not?"
"I should not mind being a little older, I do assure you."
"We all want to be older when we are young and younger when we are old. It is the perversity of human nature. But why talk in generalizations. It is of you I want to talk."
"A not very interesting subject, I am afraid."
"An absorbing subject." His question startled me. "What do you think of me?"
I flushed. I could not tell him what I really thought of him. I sought the right words. "I think you are probably very ... shrewd."
"Oh, thank you. What else?"
"Well, I suppose a man of the world."
"A shrewd man of the world. It does not sound too bad for a start. Anything else?"
"I cannot understand why you bother to pursue me."
He laughed. "Shall I tell you what I think of you?"
"I am not really interested."
"You are growing up, and you don't always tell the truth. Everybody wants to know what others think of them. I am going to tell you in any case. I think you are adorable."
I blushed to the roots of my hair I am sure.
"And," he went on, "/ am speaking the truth."
I struggled for my composure.
"Now I will speak the truth," I said, "and I will say that I am sure you find many people of my sex ... adorable."
"You are discerning. I will not deny it."
"It would be useless to."
"And quite out of the question, if this is to be an exchange of truths. But," he went on, "you are the most adorable of them all."
I looked at him cynically. "Well, the cider was good," I said. "Thank you for it. And I really must be going."
"We have only just come."
"It does not take very long to drink a goblet of cider."
"But look, I have not finished mine."
"I could leave you to finish it."
"I could not allow you to go back alone."
"I came out alone."
"I wonder what your father will have to say about your solitary wanderings when he returns."
"He will be too much engrossed with his new wife to think much about me."
His hand came out across the table and I was too late to elude it. He held mine tightly, fondling it.
"So you are a little—jealous?"
"Indeed I am not."
"Stepmothers have a reputation for being unacceptable."
"I would not judge beforehand. I have only had a stepmother for ten days and during those she has been absent."
"Marriages are in the air," he said. "They say they are catching."
I shrugged my shoulders and managed to free my hand. I stood up.
"Do you insist?" he asked.
"I do."
"Just as the conversation is getting interesting."
"Is it so interesting to you?"
"Enormously so. I am telling you how much I admire you. You are more than pretty. You are beautiful."
I looked at him scornfully. "I do have an excellent mirror, Mr. Featherstone. And even if it does not tell me what I would like to know, it tells me the truth."
I thought of dear Miss Bray comforting me. "You may not be exactly pretty, Ann Alice, but you have an interesting face. Yes, on the whole I think you may turn out to be quite attractive."
And now he was telling me I was beautiful!
"Your hair is a lovely shade of brown and your eyes... they show many colours. Which are they? Brown? Green? Grey?"
"Generally known as hazel," I said, "and really quite undistinguished."
"You have a pretty mouth."
"Thank you. That is a nice point on which to close this assessment of my appearance."
"I could go on talking of them endlessly."
"Then I am afraid I should have to leave you to talk to yourself. I find the subject rather boring."
He drained his goblet.
"Are you determined to cut short this pleasant tete-a-tete?"
He was standing beside me and taking my arm held it firmly. His face was very close to mine and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. I recoiled in horror.
"Do you not like me a little?" he asked almost pathetically.
I released my arm and started for the door.
"I hardly know you, Mr. Featherstone," I said over my shoulder. "I never make hasty judgements of people."
"I think when you really allow yourself to know me you might become rather fond of me."
He insisted on helping me into the saddle.
"Thank you," I said. He stood for a few moments looking up at me. Then he took my hand and kissed it. I felt as though I had been touched by a snake.
He looked at me pleadingly. "Give yourself a chance to know me," he said.
I turned my horse away and did not answer. Did I imagine it or did I detect an angry glint in his eyes. I was not sure but it sent a little shiver of alarm through me.
I walked my horse away from the inn and he was beside me.
We rode home in silence.
But my uneasiness is growing.
March 23 rd
In a week they will return. I am almost eager for them to do so. This month has been a strange one for me and it seems to have been haunted by Mr. Featherstone.
I have not been riding so much because he is sure to be lying in wait for me. He is always trying to tell me that he is in love with me.
I don't believe him for one instant. As a matter of fact sometimes I think he dislikes me. I have caught an expression flitting across his face and he looks really angry. I think he has probably made easy conquests in the past and my aloofness does not please him at all.
There were times when I thought he was in love with Miss Gilmour. Oh, how I wish he had been and they had gone away together!
How different everything would have been then!
If Miss Bray were not in the process of having a baby I would go to her. I could never have explained my feelings to her though. It was better to do nothing but to continue with the cat-and-mouse game in which Mr. Featherstone seemed determined to indulge, I keep thinking of that analogy. What does the cat do when it catches the mouse? It teases it, pretending it is going to allow it to escape and catches it before it can do so, testing it, torturing it... until it finally kills it.
I am really working myself into a state of nervousness over Mr. Featherstone.
I sometimes wake in the night in a state of terror because I believe he is in the house. I have even risen from my bed, opened the door and looked into the corridor really expecting to see him lurking there. Sometimes, I stand at my window which is at the back of the house and does not look over the Green but onto the fields and the woods. I look for a figure hiding there.
Then I laugh at myself. "Silly dreams. Foolish imaginings," I say.
But it is the fear in my mind which produces these thoughts.
Why do I feel so intense about him? It is almost as though it is a premonition, a warning.
It will be better when they come home, I keep telling myself.
Just another week.
May 3rd
Today I remembered my journal. I could not find it at first and I had a horrible fear that I had lost it. I started to wonder what I had written in it and what my stepmother would think if it fell into her hands. I was sure I had written something unflattering about her.