I have a foreboding..." He paused, sighed, then laughed and flung back his head, as if throwing off some weight that had oppressed him.
It was admirably played; Nick Trenchard, had he observed it, might have envied the performance; and it took effect with her, this adding of a prospective martyr's crown to the hero's raiment he had earlier donned.
It was a master-touch worthy of one who was deeply learned--from the school of foul experience--in the secret ways that lead to a woman's favour.

In a pursuit of this kind there was no subterfuge too mean, no treachery too base for Sir Rowland Blake.
"Will you walk, mistress ?" he said, and she, feeling that it were an unkindness not to do his will, assented gravely.

They moved down the sloping lawn, side by side, Sir Rowland leaning on his cane, bareheaded, his feathered hat tucked under his arm.

Before them the river's smooth expanse, swollen and yellow with the recent rains, glowed like a sheet of copper, so that it blurred the sight to look upon it long.
A few steps they took with no word uttered, then Sir Rowland spoke.
"With this foreboding that is on me," said he, "I could not go without seeing you, without saying something that I may never have another chance of saying; something that--who knows ?--but for the emprise to which I am now wedded you had never heard from me." He shot her a furtive, sidelong glance from under his heavy, beetling brows, and now, indeed, he observed a change ripple over the composure of her face like a sudden breeze across a sheet of water.

The deep lace collar at her throat rose and fell, and her fingers toyed nervously with a ribbon of her grey bodice.