“I’m so sorry you feel like that, Mrs. Aviolet. It must make it so extraordinarily lonely for you here.”
She felt a rush of warm gratitude for the sympathy in his voice.
“Oh, it does. I’m a—a fish out of water, altogether, and I’d go away to-morrow if it wasn’t for little Ces. It isn’t only Ford—though I hate him the worst—it’s the whole life—everything.”
“I’m so sorry for you,” he repeated gently.
“Thank you,” said Rose Aviolet, her honest, child-like brown eyes gazing at him, and her rouged mouth trembling a little with the sincerity of her feelings.
V
“What do they want to start off so early for?” said Rose disconsolately, when the men of the party went away the next morning with their guns as soon as breakfast was over.
She envisaged without enthusiasm the prospect of a morning spent tête-à-tête with Miss Grierson-Amberly.
“Where’s Cecil?” Diana asked. “Couldn’t we take him out?”
Rose’s face lightened immediately.