“I know what you must think of me,” she burst out, “but—but you don’t understand—you don’t see——”
“No doubt I’m stupid, but I confess I don’t. At least there’s only one thing I see.” He bowed and waved his hand towards the door. “Shall we go?” he asked.
She led the way downstairs, her skirt again held close and raised clear of her ankles; her care for it was not lost on Harold as he followed her, for she heard him laugh again with an obtrusive bitterness that made his mirth a taunt. The old caretaker waited for them in the passage.
“When’ll you be coming, sir?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not certain we shall come,” said he. “The lady is not much taken with the house.”
“Ah, well!” sighed the old woman resignedly.
For an account of their drive back to the station materials are, again, sadly wanting. “He hardly said a word, and I did nothing but try to get my face clean and my gloves presentable,” was Winifred’s history of their journey. But she remembered—or chose to relate—a little more of what passed while they waited for the train on the platform at Euston. He left her for a few minutes on pretext of smoking a cigarette, and she saw him walking up and down, apparently in thought. Then he came back and sat down beside her. His manner was grave now; to judge by his recorded words, perhaps it was even a little pompous; but when may young men be pompous, if not at such crises as these?
“It’s no use pretending that nothing has happened, Winifred,” he said. “That would be the hollowest pretence, not worthy, I think, of either of us. Perhaps we had better take time to consider our course and—er—our relations to one another.”
“You don’t want to marry me now?” she asked simply.
“I want to do what is best for our happiness,” he replied. “We cannot forget what has happened to-day.”