Jean's eyes were full of tears, when the parting came. The Colonel looked ill and worn, but his face was illumined with peace and content, and his wife was perfectly oblivious of everything and everybody but him.
As they drove away, Mrs. Talbot turned to Jean.
"That is a marriage that must have Heaven's blessing on it!" she said. "Philip is lucky to have won her at last, when he needs her most. He ought to have been married to her, years ago. I never could understand it. It seems an irony of fate, doesn't it? That they should be allowed such a short time of wedded bliss. But Frances is a sensible woman to have done it. She will be an invaluable nurse to him, and I really could not have left my family to go with him."
Jean felt very forlorn, when they had gone. Mrs. Douglas had let her house to a friend, and Jean was in lodgings with an old servant of hers, who had a house in a quiet little street at the back of the church in Kensington High Street. She was away most of the day, but in the evening, when she came back to her empty rooms, she realised how lonely a girl could be living in London. It was a good thing that she had her interest in Sunnie's picture just now. That occupied her thoughts and attention.
One afternoon, she was walking back to her lodgings, when she met Charlie Oxton.
He greeted her delightedly.
"I've been round to your house and had such an experience. Six young ladies drinking tea with their mamma. You could have knocked me down with a feather! They were all most gushing, and when I asked for your address, tried to look shocked. So, then I explained, I was your cousin and had a perfect right to go to your rooms and have tea or lunch, or dinner as I happened to want it. And I added, 'I'm from the Colonies, and I'm accustomed to straightforward, simple dealing.' And then seeing from their looks they didn't approve, I hooked it."
"But," said Jean, who could not help smiling at this characteristic speech, "I don't intend to offer you hospitality in my rooms. It is one of the things Miss Lorraine begged me not to do. Dear me! I shall never call her Mrs. Douglas. You see she didn't much like my living by myself; but girls do it as a matter of course now, and I am in no ways peculiar. Only I have to be very circumspect in my conduct."
"Bother take circumspection! Let us go and have tea somewhere. I hate English conventionality!"
Jean took him to a favourite tea-shop of hers.