"God bless you, Blanchie!"
He turned on his heel in the balcony, and a minute later found the room behind him empty. He entered, stood thinking, and suddenly began looking all over for the photograph of himself, with a beard, which he had seen there a week before.
XIII QUID PRO QUO
It was his blessing that had done it; up to then she had controlled her feelings in a fashion worthy of the title just bestowed upon her. If only he had stopped at that, and kept his blessing to himself! It sounded so very much more like a knell that Blanche had begun first to laugh, and then to make such a fool of herself (as she herself reiterated) that she was obliged to run away in the worst possible order.
But that was not the end of those four superfluous words of final benediction; before the night was out they had solved, to Blanche's satisfaction, the hitherto impenetrable mystery of Cazalet's conduct.
He had done something in Australia, something that fixed a gulf between him and her. Blanche did not mean something wrong, much less a crime, least of all any sort of complicity in the great crime which had been committed while he was on his way home. Obviously he could have had no connection with that, until days afterward as the accused man's friend. Yet he had on his conscience some act or other of which he was ashamed to speak. It might even itself be shameful; that was what his whole manner had suggested, but what Blanche was least ready and at the same time least unwilling to believe. She felt she could forgive such an old friend almost anything. But she believed the worst he had done was to emulate his friend Mr. Potts, and to get engaged or perhaps actually married to somebody in the bush.