Her head bowed; she seemed near tears again. She murmured, “I don’t deserve such kindness. I…”

“Say no more. I cannot think of money better spent.”

A delicate tinge of triumph was running through Charles. It had been as Grogan prophesied. Confession had brought cure—or at least a clear glimpse of it. He turned to pick up his ashplant by the block of flint.

“I must come to Mrs. Tranter’s?”

“Excellent. There will of course be no necessity to speak of our meetings.”

“I shall say nothing.”

He saw the scene already; his polite but not too interested surprise, followed by his disinterested insistence that any pecuniary assistance desirable should be to his charge. Ernestina might very well tease him about it—but that would ease his conscience. He smiled at Sarah.

“You have shared your secret. I think you will find it to be an unburdening in many other ways. You have very considerable natural advantages. You have nothing to fear from life. A day will come when these recent unhappy years may seem no more than that cloud-stain over there upon Chesil Bank. You shall stand in sunlight—and smile at your own past sorrows.” He thought he detected a kind of light behind the doubt in her eyes; for a moment she was like a child, both reluctant and yet willing to be cozened—or homilized—out of tears. His smile deepened. He added lightly, “And now had we better not descend?”

She seemed as if she would like to say something, no doubt reaffirm her gratitude, but his stance of brisk waiting made her, after one last lingering look into his eyes, move past him.

She led the way down as neat-footedly as she had led it up. Looking down on her back, he felt tinges of regret. Not to see her thus again… regret and relief. A remarkable young woman. He would not forget her; and it seemed some consolation that he would not be allowed to. Aunt Tranter would be his future spy.

They came to the base of the lower cliff, and went through the first tunnel of ivy, over the clearing, and into the second green corridor—and then!

There came from far below, from the main path through the Undercliff, the sound of a stifled peal of laughter. Its effect was strange—as if some wood spirit had been watching their clandestine meeting and could now no longer bottle up her—for the laugh was unmistakably female—mirth at their foolish confidence in being unseen.

Charles and Sarah stopped as of one accord. Charles’s growing relief was instantaneously converted into a shocked alarm. But the screen of ivy was dense, the laugh had come from two or three hundred yards away; they could not have been seen. Unless as they came down the slope… a moment, then she swiftly raised a finger to her lips, indicated that he should not move, and then herself stole along to the end of the tunnel. Charles watched her crane forward and stare cautiously down towards the path. Then her face turned sharply back to him. She beckoned—he was to go to her, but with the utmost quietness; and simultaneously that laugh came again. It was quieter this time, yet closer. Whoever had been on the path had left it and was climbing up through the ash trees toward them.

Charles trod cautiously towards Sarah, making sure of each place where he had to put his wretchedly unstealthy boots. He felt himself flushing, most hideously embarrassed. No explanation could hold water for a moment. However he was seen with Sarah, it must be in flagrante delicto.

He came to where she stood, and where the ivy was fortunately at its thickest. She had turned away from the interlopers and stood with her back against a tree trunk, her eyes cast down as if in mute guilt for having brought them both to this pass. Charles looked through the leaves and down the slope of the ash grove—and his blood froze. Coming up towards them, as if seeking their same cover, were Sam and Mary. Sam had his arm round the girl’s shoulders. He carried his hat, and she her bonnet; she wore the green walking dress given her by Ernestina—indeed, the last time Charles had seen it it had been on Ernestina—and her head lay back a little against Sam’s cheek. They were young lovers as plain as the ashes were old trees; as greenly erotic as the April plants they trod on.

Charles drew back a little but kept them in view. As he watched Sam drew the girl’s face round and kissed her. Her arm came up and they embraced; and then holding hands, stood shyly apart a little. Sam led the girl to where a bank of grass had managed to establish itself between the trees. Mary sat and lay back, and Sam leaned beside her, looking down at her; then he touched her hair aside from her cheeks and bent and kissed her tenderly on the eyes.

Charles felt pierced with a new embarrassment: he glanced at Sarah, to see if she knew who the intruders were. But she stared at the hart’s-tongue ferns at her feet, as if they were merely sheltering from some shower of rain. Two minutes, then three passed. Embarrassment gave way to a degree of relief—it was clear that the two servants were far more interested in exploring each other than their surroundings. He glanced again at Sarah. Now she too was watching, from round her tree trunk. She turned back, her eyes cast down. But then without warning she looked up at him.

A moment.

Then she did something as strange, as shocking, as if she had thrown off her clothes.

She smiled.

It was a smile so complex that Charles could at the first moment only stare at it incredulously. It was so strangely timed! He felt she had almost been waiting for such a moment to unleash it upon him—this revelation of her humor, that her sadness was not total. And in those wide eyes, so somber, sad and direct, was revealed an irony, a new dimension of herself—one little Paul and Virginia would have been quite familiar with in days gone by, but never till now bestowed on Lyme.

Where are your pretensions now, those eyes and gently curving lips seemed to say; where is your birth, your science, your etiquette, your social order? More than that, it was not a smile one could stiffen or frown at; it could only be met with a smile in return, for it excused Sam and Mary, it excused all; and in some way too subtle for analysis, undermined all that had passed between Charles and herself till then. It lay claim to a far profounder understanding, acknowledgment of that awkward equality melting into proximity than had been consciously admitted. Indeed, Charles did not consciously smile in return; he found himself smiling; only with his eyes, but smiling. And excited, in some way too obscure and general to be called sexual, to the very roots of his being; like a man who at last comes, at the end of a long high wall, to the sought-for door… but only to find it locked.

For several moments they stood, the woman who was the door, the man without the key; and then she lowered her eyes again. The smile died. A long silence hung between them. Charles saw the truth: he really did stand with one foot over the precipice. For a moment he thought he would, he must plunge. He knew if he reached out his arm she would meet with no resistance… only a passionate reciprocity of feeling. The red in his cheeks deepened, and at last he whispered.

“We must never meet alone again.”

She did not raise her head, but gave the smallest nod of assent; and then with an almost sullen movement she turned away from him, so that he could not see her face. He looked again through the leaves. Sam’s head and shoulders were bent over the invisible Mary. Long moments passed, but Charles remained watching, his mind still whirling down that precipice, hardly aware that he was spying, yet infected, as each moment passed, with more of the very poison he was trying to repel.

Mary saved him. Suddenly she pushed Sam aside and laughing, ran down the slope back towards the path; poising a moment, her mischievous face flashed back at Sam, before she raised her skirts and skittered down, a thin line of red petticoat beneath the viridian, through the violets and the dog’s mercury. Sam ran after her. Their figures dwindled between the gray stems; dipped, disappeared, a flash of green, a flash of blue; a laugh that ended in a little scream; then silence.