There would be no crisis. Nothing had happened and nothing would happen. A crisis, indeed, must have spelt disaster, Sir Julian told himself mechanically, all the while with a sense of having somehow missed a clue. The next moment he had found it.
His original instinct with regard to Miss Marchrose had been right. She had in all probability known whither she was drifting, and she had been prepared to face the rapids gallantly. But Mark ... Julian dropped his metaphors and envisaged crude facts—Mark, after all, had himself been responsible for the determining factor that alone could have vanquished her courage utterly.
Fully alive to an awkward situation, Mark Easter had inevitably conveyed to the girl, whom Sir Julian, more than ever, qualified as an incurable romanticist, the illimitable difference in their scales of relative values.
And it was that certainty that, reaching her in the atmospheric tension of the last few days, had defeated Miss Marchrose.
XIX
"You're going this afternoon, Mark, after all?"
"If you've no objection, Sir Julian."
"My dear fellow, I'm always trying to persuade you that Saturday afternoon and Sunday were not meant for work."
Mark laughed, not sounding very much amused.
"Report progress after you've got there and let me know when you're likely to be back."