Loughlin heard no more, for some men came noisily into the bar and Crabbe hurried back to serve them.
III
In the afternoon Orianda drove Gerald in the gig back to the station to fetch the baggage.
“Well, what success, Orianda?” he asked as they jogged along.
“It would be perfect but for Lizzie—that was rather a blow. But I should have foreseen her—Lizzies are inevitable. And she is difficult—she weeps. But, O I am glad to be home again. Gerald, I feel I shall not leave it, ever.”
“Yes, Orianda,” he protested, “leave it for me. I’ll give your nostalgia a little time to fade. I think it was a man named Pater said: ‘All life is a wandering to find home.’ You don’t want to omit the wandering?”
“Not if I have found my home again?”
“A home with Lizzie!”
“No, not with Lizzie.” She flicked the horse with the whip. “I shall be too much for Lizzie; Lizzie will resume her wandering. She’s as stupid as a wax widow in a show. Nathaniel is tired of Lizzie, and Lizzie of Nathaniel. The two wretches! But I wish she did not weep.”
Gerald had not observed any signs of tearfulness in Lizzie at the midday dinner; on the contrary, she seemed rather a jolly creature, not that she had spoken much beyond “Yes, ’Thaniel, No, ’Thaniel,” or Gerald, or Orianda, as the case had been. Her use of his Christian name, which had swept him at once into the bosom of the family, shocked him rather pleasantly. But he did not know what had taken place between the two women; perhaps Lizzie had already perceived and tacitly accepted her displacement.