"Stuff and nonsense!" Mr. Carden-Cox spoke angrily. "The girl is demented. Fact is, it's one of two things. Either you are tired of being here, and you want to get off the rest of the time, or you are deceiving me about the postscript, and can't stand being questioned. I believe it's that."
Fulvia seized on the first suggestion.
"I am not tired of being with you, but I can't endure to be away from Nigel all Saturday afternoon," she said. The assertion was true enough, though this had now ceased to be her prominent feeling. "Any other day I should not mind, but Saturday—Saturday is his only free afternoon. Uncle, do let me go. I will come another time, and stay as long as you like. Monday, Tuesday, any day; only not Saturday. I always have him then."
Mr. Carden-Cox grunted out a laugh, not ill pleased.
"You're a pair of model lovers!" he growled. "Well, have things your own way. But the fly is not ordered till 5.30."
"Oh, I don't mind rain; I never catch cold. It will not take me long to get home. And any other day—"
She did not finish her sentence, and could hardly wait to say good-bye.
Mr. Carden-Cox seemed in doubt whether to be amused or vexed by her precipitate flight. He lent her an umbrella, and apologised for the lack of a lady's waterproof. Fulvia had come in her best black walking-dress, which would suffer from pelting rain. But what did she care? What did anything matter, in comparison with getting home?
The distance had never seemed so great, and Fulvia had never traversed it at such speed. She would not let herself think by the way. Distracting possibilities presented themselves, and Fulvia refused to look at them. Her arrival at home, dripping and forlorn, with flushed face and bespattered skirt, was greeted by a triple exclamation from Mrs. Browning and the girls, "Fulvia! Already!"
"Yes; I didn't want to stay any longer. Uncle let me off. Where is Nigel?"