“I only wondered,” said he coldly.
“But what an extraordinary thing to wonder!” she said. “Do tell me what made you think of it.”
“Very well,” he said, “I will. The person who told me that your mother had lodgings, also told me that your mother had a daughter who served in a shop.”
“Never!” she cried. “What a hateful idea!”
“A tobacconist’s shop,” he persisted; “and her name was Susannah Sheepmarsh.”
“Oh,” she answered, “that was me.” She spoke instantly and frankly, but she blushed crimson.
“And you’re ashamed of it,—Socialist?” he asked with a sneer, and his eyes were fierce on her burning face.
“I’m not! Row home, please. Or I’ll take the sculls if you’re tired, or your shoulder hurts. I don’t want to talk to you any more. You tried to trap me into telling a lie. You don’t understand anything at all. And I’ll never forgive you.”
“Yes, you will,” he said to himself again and again through the silence in which they plashed down the river. But when he was alone in his cottage, the truth flew at him and grappled him with teeth and claws. He loved her. She loved, or had loved—or might have loved—or might love—his brother. He must go: and the next morning he went without a word. He left a note for Mrs Sheepmarsh, and a cheque in lieu of notice; and letter and cheque were signed with his name in full.
He went back to the old life, but the taste of it all was gone. Shooting parties, house parties, the Brydges woman even, prettier than ever, and surer of all things: how could these charm one whose fancy, whose heart indeed, wandered for ever in a green garden or by a quiet river with a young woman who had served in a tobacconist’s shop, and who would be some day his brother’s wife?