"Do not leave me," she says, preparing to cry again directly if he shows any determination to have it out with Shadwell. "Stay with me. I feel so nervous and—and faint."
"Do you, darling?" Regarding her anxiously. "You do look pale. What was Shadwell saying to you? Why were you crying? If I thought he——"
"No, no,"—laying five hasty, convincing little fingers on his arm,—"nothing of the kind. Won't you believe me? He only reminded me of past days, and I was foolish, and—that was all."
"But what brought him at all?"
"To see me," says Molly, longing yet fearing to tell him of Philip's unpardonable behavior. "But do not let us talk of him. I cannot bear him. He makes me positively nervous. He is so dark, so vehement, so—uncanny!"
"The fellow isn't much of a fellow, certainly," says Luttrell, with charming explicitness.
For the mile that lies between them and home, they scarcely speak,—walking together, as children might, hand in hand, but in a silence unknown to our household pests.
"How quiet you are!" Molly says, at length awakening to the fact of her lover's dumbness. "What are you thinking about?"
"You, of course," he answers, with a rather joyless smile. "I have received my marching orders. I must join my regiment in Dublin next Saturday."
"And this is Tuesday!" Aghast at the terrible news. "Oh, Teddy! Could they not have left us together for the few last days that remain to us?"