"I didn't know you did any."
"Oh, dear, yes. I go round to no end of hospitals in town and play the piano to the men. They adore it," declared Muriel. "Only the nurses are such cats! Women never can be decent to me, somehow I had a fiendish row with one ward-sister—all jealousy on her part, of course. I simply came away. But what a place to come away to, isn't it?" She gave a tiny grimace about the musty village shop, and towards the glimpse of streaming wilderness outside. "And imagine my meeting you here!"
I spoke up.
"Well, but imagine meeting you! I thought you were never to be seen away from London or some civilized seaside town? What brings you to Careg?"
For even yet the whole situation hadn't broken upon me. Only, I was sore and ruffled, and utterly upset by this meeting with Muriel.
It was opening an old wound. I'd thought I'd forgotten. But, brought face to face with this girl for whom Harry had left me before he sailed, my heart throbbed as painfully as it had on that ghastly morning when I'd got that note to say he'd gone.
Now I wondered with a stab if she were actually engaged to him? I hadn't heard that she was.
She, the unexpected one, gave a pleased little laugh.
"What brought me to Wales?" Muriel replied. "You may well ask, my dear. I was positively dragged down here. Pestered out of my life to come! By a man, of course. No!"—laughing again—"you needn't look as if you thought it must be a romance. He is merely a cousin. My cousin Dick Holiday——"
"What—?" I echoed, thoroughly petrified by this. Her cousin? He was Muriel's cousin? He, who had been talking to me of "the" girl—and who had allowed me to leap to the conclusion that she and the girl-cousin who was coming down to stay were one and the same person! Violently I had leapt to that conclusion. Quite violently, in my haste, I thought now: