'You need not forgive him this! I don't.'
After a few moments' pause Fernan said, 'The only service I can do her is to go away. Would that make him consent to her remaining?'
'Oh! we can't spare you. What shall I do with Gerald without you or Mary Vanderkist? He is always whining for Cherry!'
'Of course I can't bear to be away, but if I excite this idiotical jealousy, what can I do but take myself off? I'll go to London, and you can telegraph every hour. Go up and tell Alda—Lady Vanderkist, I mean. Casually ask what I can do for her.'
'That would stir him up again. And I don't think it would be of any use. He doesn't want to stay here, and means spite.'
'Then she could insist on staying.'
'She would be afraid. You see when people have used one another as they used you, it can't help rankling.'
'I ought not to have come here, but of course I thought the whole thing as utterly gone by with them as with myself.'
Marilda looked up with a curious expression of blushing gladness that made him exclaim,' How like you are to what you were when first I saw you!'
She blushed still more.