'Do you mean it?' he asks in a bewildered tone.
'Yes,' this very low.
'May I ask why you have changed?' and Dalrymple draws himself up and his voice is cold and studiously polite. 'Is it money,—I am not very well off I know, but I did not think you were the kind of girl to mind that?'
'Ah, you see I am different from what you thought, it is a good thing we found it out before it was too late.'
Jimmy looks at her curiously, and then catches her in his arms. 'Oh my dearest,' he says, 'you can't mean it, you could not be so cruel—'
For a second Lippa feels she cannot hold out any longer, but it is only for a second, and then freeing herself from his embrace she says slowly and distinctly—'I mean all I have said.'
'I must go then,' says Jimmy, a world of sorrow in his honest brown eyes.
'Yes,' she replies, not daring to look up till she hears the door shut behind him, and then she realises all she has done: sent away the man she loves, the one man who is 'her world of all the men'; sent him away thinking she is cruel and mercenary. She chokes back the tears that start to her eyes; the others must not know, must not even suspect, but oh the aching at her heart.
It goes on raining steadily all day, and every one is dull and depressed, even Chubby. Dalrymple suddenly discovers that it is absolutely necessary for him to be back at the barracks as soon as possible, and bidding farewell, decamps.
Lady Anne, despite the weather, tramps off to the village to preside at a sewing-class. Philippa is forbidden by Mabel to put her nose out of doors, who then retires to Lady Dadford's private boudoir where she spends the afternoon.