CHAPTER XXXIII
"OUR" GERMANS
"The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
May re-possess his blood."
—KIPLING.
Gone away!
The news was given to me by Elizabeth, who had it from her fiancé, Colonel Fielding.
His friend and host, Captain Holiday, had gone up to London to attend a medical board; also he had business which might keep him away for some time.
He'd be away for weeks!
A great blankness fell upon me, and when it lifted I felt that I had been pushed rudely out of my fool's paradise.
Care for me? Of course, he couldn't care for me. Men don't go away without a single word of good-bye from girls of whom they care at all. I had an example of that in Harry. He and Captain Holiday cared for me about equally! That is, not two straws!
I had been a lunatic to delude myself into the belief that I was the girl of whom Dick Holiday had held forth to me—"Just the girl I want!"
Not Joan Matthews! No, no, Muriel Elvey was the girl he'd meant all that time. Yes! I was now once more miserably certain of that, in spite of all that Colonel Fielding had said.