When he has gone, Georgie, pale and trembling, turns to Sartoris and lays her hand upon his arm.
"He hates me. He will not even look at me," she says, passionately. "What was it he said, that I had no heart? Ah! what would I not give to be able to prove his words true?"
She bursts into tears, and sobs long and bitterly.
"Tears are idle," says Sartoris, sadly. "Have you yet to learn that? Take comfort from the thought that all things have an end."
CHAPTER XXX.
"Oh that the things which have been were not now
In memory's resurrection! But the past
Bears in her arms the present and the future."—Bailey.
Of course it is quite impossible to hide from Clarissa Peyton that everything is going wrong at Sartoris. Georgie's pale unsmiling face (so different from that of old), and Dorian's evident determination to absent himself from all society, tell their own tale.
She has, of course, heard of the uncomfortable gossip that has connected Ruth Annersley's mysterious disappearance with Dorian, but—stanch friend as she is—has laughed to scorn all such insinuations: that Georgie can believe them, puzzles her more than she cares to confess. For a long time she has fought against the thought that Dorian's wife can think aught bad of Dorian; but time undeceives her.
To-day, Georgie, who is now always feverishly restless, tells herself she will go up to Gowran and see Clarissa. To her alone she clings,—not outwardly, in any marked fashion, but in her inmost soul,—as to one who at her worst extremity will support and comfort her.