"Thanks. I shall be back for dinner, I expect. But don't wait," and he opened the door.
Geoffrey laid his hand on his arm.
"You are not going to do anything foolish, Harry?" he asked, in a sudden vague spasm of alarm.
"No, you idiot! Let me go."
"Is there nothing I can do?" he asked.
"Nothing, thanks."
Geoffrey went into the smoking room and sat down in a bewilderment of distress and anxiety. What could possibly have happened? he asked himself. If anything had gone wrong at Vail, if Mr. Francis, to imagine the worst, had even died suddenly, surely Harry would have told him. Then why did he wish to see Lady Oxted, but apparently not wish to see Miss Aylwin? For the moment he thought there might be a light here: it was conceivable that he had proposed to her and been refused. But when, where? For Geoffrey had left him not two hours ago in his accustomed good spirits. Again, if he had ever felt certain of anything, it was that, unless the girl was the most infernal and finished flirt ever made for the undoing of man, the attraction between the two was deep and mutual. And no girl had ever seemed to him less like a flirt than Evie. Even if this was so, why should Harry at once wish to go to Lady Oxted? These things had no answer; there was nothing to do but wait, wait drearily, and listen to the hiss of the faster-falling rain.
Harry drove to Grosvenor Square through the blinking lightning, and was shown up. Like Geoffrey, Lady Oxted was appalled at that drawn and haggard face; like Geoffrey, too, the question whether Evie had refused him suggested itself to her, but was instantly rejected.
"My dear boy, what is the matter?" she cried. "Have you bad news from Vail?"
Harry took a letter from his pocket, and folded it down so as to leave some ten lines of large, legible hand for her to read.