How could she tell Lancelot, so loyal, so chivalrous, and devoted, that she had changed her mind in the train, and was determined to return to Cara by the half-past eight express?
In spite of her most determined efforts, tears dropped on her blouse, and Lancelot, who had been anxiously watching her, drew her tenderly towards him, and as she sobbed on his shoulder said, ‘There, there, there!’ as if he were comforting a child. Steel herself against her lover as she might, his presence affected her deeply.
“I understand all about it—this has been an awful wrench for you, a terrible day; but now you must look forward, not backwards any more. The future is ours, and I have ever so much to say to you.”
“And I to you,” she murmured, drawing away from him, and drying her eyes as she spoke. She glanced nervously about the room—a room to be imprinted on her memory as long as memory existed: for here she must part with Lancelot, and for ever. It would be, so to speak, a chamber of death, and at the thought she shuddered. How morbid she was growing, or was she a little mad? There was that grinning devil confronting her, with wide-open jaws, flattened ears, and staring eyes, and the background of this lofty, heavily furnished apartment seemed to weigh upon her senses; the perfume of the roses to stifle her.
“Here is tea,” announced Captain Lumley. “Shall I pour it out and bring it over to you?”
“No, no, thank you,” rising and taking off her gloves; “but if you would open the windows?”
“Won’t you take your hat off?”
She hesitated for a moment and murmured:
“My hair is so untidy.”
But ultimately unpinned her hat, and threw it on a sofa; it would not take long to put on again.