Could I have written that very evening to Mr. Waters, cancelling that preposterous arrangement with him, returning that lump sum of salary, and saying——
Impossible! A hundred pounds of that salary had had to go, irrevocably, as soon as I got it. And already I’d broken into that remaining four hundred in the bank! I couldn’t make up even that.
How would it have been if when Sydney proposed to me, I had replied:
“I can’t see you. I can’t even tell you anything more, yet. But wait a year, and then ask me again”?
Since he’s “waited” so long——!
But no.
That wouldn’t have done either. It wouldn’t be keeping my bargain. It would be “giving away” my compact with that other, that detestable man, who trusts after all to my word—and after all, Sydney has got himself to thank for the fact that I haven’t been choosing a trousseau to please him....
Well! There’s nothing in this outfit, I hope, that won’t pass the censorship of the most critical glances in any big house—those of the servants. Men-servants, I suspect, are almost harder to “impress” than maid-servants.
But it was no lordly groom or supercilious chauffeur who met me at Sevenoaks Station as I stepped out of the train.
The tall, broad-shouldered figure that strode towards me looked, in a big, grey, loose motor-coat, so utterly different from the mind-picture of the slimly-built, dark, Vandyke-bearded young man that had travelled most of the way down with me, so different, too, from the other apparition I know only too well in immaculate “City” get-up, that at first I didn’t recognize him.