"I hope I sent out some calming, loving thoughts, for the whole evening was terribly jarred, one could feel it. Poor foolish, defiant creature! I could see her hands shaking, as she tried to take her machine from me. I couldn't let her go like that, of course, and I tried to say a little something, very quietly, about the glory of God's own evening light all round us. But she kept her back to the sunset all the time.
"And, Julian, to my dismay and astonishment, she was not alone. Mark was with her."
"Why shouldn't he be?"
"Have you forgotten my poor Clarence so soon?" reproachfully enquired Lady Rossiter, whose cousinly affection for her poor Clarence appeared to increase by leaps and bounds in proportion to the growth of her disesteem for Miss Marchrose.
"Clarence has nothing to do with it. The circumstances are entirely dissimilar."
"We can't tell that in the case of a woman whom I must, much as I dislike uttering any shadow of condemnation, call utterly heartless. Shall I ever forget what that hospital nurse told me of poor Clarence's state of mind after that heartless betrayal——"
"In any circumstances, Edna, Mark isn't in the least likely to knock his head against the walls of the cottage, and if he does, they will very probably fall about his ears. I wish he would attend to his own house, before doing up the tenants'! Those children have nearly broken down the whole of the garden palings. But go on—did you achieve any rapprochement between Mark and the sunset, or was he also ringing bicycle-bells and turning his back on it?"
"Mark made some foolish explanation about seeing the girl back to Duckpool Farm, but they were evidently walking, and pushing the bicycle between them."
"I don't see how they could do anything else, if there was only one bicycle," said Julian, idly desirous of making more obvious a want of sympathy that was already perfectly well en evidence.
"You may not understand it, Julian, but Mark is very dear to me. To you he may be merely a good fellow, and an excellent estate agent, but to me he has been something more ever since that ghastly tragedy of his wife. I gave him all the help that a woman could give, then, and I can't ever forget it. I can't let Mark break his heart a second time. Not that she's attractive, or even pretty," said Edna, distinctly divided between her determination to exploit Mark Easter's peril and her reluctance to allow to Miss Marchrose any of the usual advantages attributed to a charmer of men....