By coincidence, Jenny also wore slacks and a sweater coloured brown, with a light coat thrown over her shoulders. As soon as he saw her, other considerations of feminine appeal were forgotten. Her yellow hair curled to her shoulders. She was smoking a cigarette, which she instantly threw away. They ran towards each other.
"How the devil did you get back here?"
‘I was never away," Jenny confessed. "I thought I could take that train. But I couldn't face it I told the taxi-driver to come back. Because—" She stopped. "So you'd have paid five hundred pounds just to learn where I'd gone?"
"If that butler has blabbed, the old lady will sack him."
"Dawson," said Jenny, "isn't a butler. I suppose he is, in a way, and Grandmother insists on calling him that He's butler and handyman too; we don't employ much of a staff of servants. Anyway, I caught him when he was going to take your money. I was afraid you could hear me whispering in the background."
Realization bumped him. "Come to think of it I heard something."
"Of course I rang up Mr. Anthony after you did, and said it was all a joke and he wasn't to send any cheque. Dawson nearly wept Then I made him ring you and give the address, or you might have come to the Manor. But—"
Here, raising her blue eyes, Jenny began such a bitter denunciation of her own character, such a writhing of self-loathing, that it would have been considered strong even by her worst enemy.
"Martin, I knew you had to go through with that "bet' I wouldn't have you back out That's what makes me so vile. There's one excuse," her eyes looked at him oddly, "that perhaps helps, and I've got to tell you soon. But Ruth had got me absolutely furious. Then, when I saw you running across the road after her…"
He ended her rush of speech in the appropriate way, which was an effective way. At the back of his mind it occurred to him that he wouldn't just yet tell Jenny about that small brush with Ruth last night Presently, of course! But not just yet