Hugh, impatiently pacing the dining-room, did not hear the door open, and when once he suddenly turned round as he reached the hearthrug, he started back in alarm at finding himself confronted by a ghostly figure.
It was Lilia, Magdalen-like, with her hair dishevelled and hanging about over her white dressing-gown, with her head drooping, her swollen eyelids cast down, her arms crossed under her loose sleeves.
“Miss Pym!” he said. Then he placed a chair for her, and set a guard upon his emotions.
She sat down on the edge of the chair as if she were on sufferance. Indeed, she felt as if nothing in the world was her own now, except her grief.
“What can I do for you?” he said, as gently and tenderly as he could. “Anything, anything that you wish, I will try to do.”
She glanced up, at this.
“Will you—go?” she said, timidly. “And forget all about us—about him, and me? And I will write to you about everything.”
Her head drooped again. He stood looking at her in silence for a few moments, wondering what prompted that speech—what, indeed, she really felt. Then he said, very gently:
“Am I to understand that you really wish me to go?”
She murmured “Yes.”