Poor Philip was in a state of mind which even his worst enemy might have commiserated. He had, with quick instinct, grasped the certainty that all was changed. There was a touch of frostiness in Alma’s manner that betokened this only too plainly. Her serenity was absolutely unruffled, she was as brightly conversational as ever; but there was just that in her manner towards himself, imperceptible however to others, which told him only too unmistakably that the barrier was reared between them. Was she not within earshot during the horrible obtrusive suddenness of this most inopportune meeting! Her woman’s wit had been prompt to put two and two together. He was done for.
Still he would not give up without a struggle. He would tell her all. She might see extenuating circumstances, and then—oh, he hardly dared think of a contingency so entrancing. Now was the time. He would dodge those hateful Glovers somehow, and get her to come out with him for that short twilight stroll which they two, in common with nearly everybody in the hotel, were in the habit of taking almost every night after table d’hôte.
“Which way shall we go to-night, Alma?” he said softly, as she rose from the table.
She paused and turned her glance upon him, her eyes full on his.
“Don’t you think you ought to go and do the civil to your—friends? I do,” she said. And without another word she left him—left him quickly and decisively, her very action, her manner of performing it, laying upon him a curt prohibition to follow.
Philip, however, did not obey her injunction as regarded the Glovers. Avoiding those ill-omened persons, he stole away into the darkness, choosing the most hilly, and therefore, to after-dinner promenaders, unfrequented way. There, in company with his pipe and his thoughts, he wandered, and the latter were very bitter. He saw through the situation only too clearly. There was no exaggerating the magnitude of the disaster. The Glovers were not the sort of people to hide their grievance under a bushel. Every one in the hotel would promptly be made free of it. Alma would never forgive him for putting upon her—however unintentionally—the most unpardonable slight of all—a public slight. No. It was the one unpardonable sin. She would never forgive it.
His estimate of the Glovers proved singularly accurate. Stung by his defection, his marked neglect of her—seeing, moreover, with woman’s instinct the real lay of the land—the fair Edith had by no means buried the secret of her relationship towards Philip within her own breast. Before bedtime it was whispered all over the hotel that the pretty girl who had arrived that evening was no other than his fiancée, whom he had heartlessly jilted in favour of Miss Wyatt.
No; assuredly this was not a thing that Alma was likely to forgive.