“Whitsuntide.”
“Why, yes, if you like, Justin,” said Laura. And he thought that she need not have taken it quite so calmly. One didn’t get married every day.... It was a big thing.... But Laura didn’t even look at him as she said, “Why, yes, if you like.”
He found suddenly that he had no more to say to her. He took up a book, while she sat beside him, staring into the fire and warming her hands. That was a silent afternoon.
But when Bellew’s letter arrived, with no apologies, but a counter invitation to Justin, she did not fail him.
The long projected expedition with its cameras and its ropes and its collecting boxes was to set forth that spring with or without Justin—but couldn’t Justin go?
Could Justin go? Laura saw the look on his face. Foolishly, knowing he would go, she could not bear to hear him say so. She interposed swiftly, smiling at him in the way he liked—
“Oh, Justin, how jolly. You’re going, aren’t you? Of course you must go. It’ll be the making of the collection.”
He looked at her, brightening, but dubious.
“But Whitsuntide? We’d nearly fixed!”
She would not let him finish.