"He couldn't have thought anything so unlikely," said Milly. "It is our good-bye walk with you."
So Christina went with them. She felt herself still trembling in every nerve from the appalling risk she had run, and ran; for which was the greater risk, that Milly should realize her guile and hate her, or that Milly and Dick should come to an understanding? She could not tell; nor where she stood; yet triumph trembled in her fear. She had succeeded. They had not spoken together. In the park she and Milly bade Dick good-bye. Dick's train was to go in the early evening. Milly, when they reached home—and she had talked lightly if not gaily in the hansom—said that she had rather a headache. She would have her luncheon in her room and sleep through the afternoon and be fit and fresh for the play that night. Christina knew in an instant that a last desperate hope cowered beneath the affected languor and lightness; and it watched her, feverishly, like the eyes of a tracked animal creeping in an underbrush past enemies' guns. When she replied, kissing her friend tenderly, that a good rest was the best of cures for a headache and that she herself would do some shopping and go to the tea for which they were engaged, these large, sick eyes of Milly's hope and fear widened and shone with a recovered security. She wanted to be left alone that afternoon. She would not go to Dick; Christina knew her too accurately to believe that possible, and Dick had been too stupid to make it conceivable; but what Milly hoped for was a sudden illumination of Dick's stupidity; some tug of unendurable pain or surmise that would bring him back on the chance of seeing her again. Milly's logic was instinctive, but Christina believed that it was sound. Dick, she, too, felt sure of it, would come. She lunched and then she sat at her writing-table and wrote some notes, looking out at the street, and then, when an hour approached in which a caller might appear, she went out.
It was one of the suddenly hot days in May that London sometimes offers. It was so hot that Christina's head, as she walked slowly up Sloane Street, swam and turned, and the lines of cabs and omnibuses and carriages in the roadway, upon which she fixed her eyes, seemed to pulse and float as they went by. Three o'clock had struck. Dick, if he came, must come before five, and she must walk up and down Sloane Street for perhaps nearly two hours. If she lay in wait in the house, Milly, who no doubt was already up and dressed and waiting, would discover her. Milly, too, might be watching from the drawing-room windows. Her peril was desperate, and her safest course was to walk on the side of the street near the house where Milly could not see her. This she did, turning regularly in her little beat, indifferent to the odd spectacle she must present, and scanning the passers-by. She had not long to wait. Half-an-hour had not elapsed, when, in an approaching hansom, she saw the broad shoulders and perplexed yet resolute features of Dick Quentyn. He, too, had come to final decisions on this fateful day.
Christina walked towards the hansom smiling. With her opened parasol and delicate dress of white and black she had the most unalarming and casual air. She seemed to have just stepped from her own doorway. She had held up her hand in signal, and Dick, arresting his cabman, sprang out. Christina greeted him gaily.
"Well, this is very nice. Can you really stop and speak to me? You're not running a risk of losing your train?"
Dick hardly smiled in answer. His face showed his uncertainty, his anxiety, his trouble.
"My train? Oh no;—I've over an hour yet. Heaps of time.—In fact—I was on my way to your house. I thought I'd have a last glimpse of you and Milly. Are you just going out?"
"Just going out. And as to Milly,—it's too bad," said Christina, "but she is getting a little sleep this afternoon and particularly asked that she shouldn't be disturbed. We are going to the play to-night. You'll walk with me for a little way, though, won't you?"
There was nothing ambiguous in her words or manner. They were certainly in keeping with the situation, and poor Dick Quentyn, although he looked almost haggard, turned obediently and walked beside her. He walked silently for a little way, while Christina talked, then, as they came out into Knightsbridge, he said, suddenly;—"Mrs. Drent,—may I ask you about something?—Do you mind? Shall we go into the park for a little while?"
"Of course; of course," said Christina, kindly and mildly.