“For all that, I am afraid I must go. I have been here an immense time already,” I said, finding some difficulty in maintaining an easy and conventional tone.
“Indeed, you haven’t!” he blurted out. “You know you told me you meant to stay on into the spring, and—and you know”—looking steadily over my head out of the window while he spoke—“there’s no reason why——”
“Oh yes, there is, Willy,” I said, interrupting him. “Poor Aunt Jane has been by herself all this time. I ought not to leave her alone any more.”
“Well, and won’t you be leaving us alone too?”—still without changing the direction of his eyes.
“Oh! you will be no worse off than you were before I came,” I answered, with the hasty indiscretion of argument.
He did not reply, and I had time to be sorry for my thoughtlessness, before he said, with an assumption of carelessness—
“Well, I’m going out now, and I advise you to do the same.” He left the room; but, reopening the door, put his head in—“I say, don’t send that letter,” he said, and shut the door again before I could answer.
I did not meet Uncle Dominick at lunch. Roche told me not to wait for him, as he was not well, and would probably not come in; and I had almost finished my solitary meal before Willy appeared. He and I were both more at our ease than we had been at our first meeting that morning. I do not know what had operated in his case, but for myself, I felt more than ever that I had become a different person—a person to whom nothing mattered very much, whose only link with the everyday life of the past and present was a very bitter and humiliating pain.
“I have to go into Moycullen this afternoon,” said Willy, occupying himself very busily with the carving of the cold beef. “I was wondering if you might care to ride there. The horse wants exercise, and I thought perhaps—you said something about wanting fresh air——”
I did not know how to refuse an invitation so humbly given, although my first inclination had been to do so.