Nobody else out of that roomful of people would detect any cloud. Harry was a young man who could "make himself at home" anywhere. He did so now. I saw everybody—except perhaps Dick Holiday, who suddenly turned silent—summing up Captain Markham as a charming fellow.
He talked pleasantly; to our host of salmon-fishing and of soldiering in the East; to our hostess of bees and poultry. Elizabeth he congratulated prettily, telling her that he (Harry) had spotted Fielding as "a man determined to win" the first time he met him. Even Elizabeth had been slightly mollified by this towards the man she'd once pronounced "a rotter!" He laughed and made himself agreeable. And only I realized that while he did so his mind was not in any of it.
Why?
I thought I guessed.
As they came along in the dog-cart he had been trying to make love to the only girl he couldn't win over at once.
Muriel had been unkind to him. What a revenge for me—if I wanted a revenge, which I didn't.
So far I guessed. But not what was coming!
CHAPTER XXIX
LOVE——AFTER THE INTERVAL
"Let this be said between us here,
One love grows green as one grows grey,
Tomorrow has no more to say
To yesterday."
—SWINBURNE.