She did not trouble herself very much to question why he should suddenly pay her this visit; it was enough for her that he had come.
Valentine emerged from the house onto the lawn; he walked deliberately.
He was glancing about him in a sorrowful sort of way.
It was some time since he had been at Sunstead; the place had a pathetically familiar air to him, and brought back hosts of memories, memories of the days when Mark had scampered and jumped about the grounds a merry little lad in a brown holland smock, and Sacha and Grace had played with him, and driven the old head gardener wild with terror at their antics. And now——
Christina, as she rose to greet him, saw that his face was pale, and his eyes wet.
“You have come to tell me something disagreeable,” she said; she trembled a little, and did not hold out her hand, and perhaps for the first time in her life, she completely forgot herself for the space of a moment.
Her voice, her words had something childlike in them, and as Valentine saw that she trembled, he immediately felt some pity steal out toward her.
“I have come to fetch you,” he said, simply and very gently. “Mark wants you.”
“Where is he?” Christina’s hands were held tightly together, and a different emotion swept over her.
She guessed his mission now, and she resented it sharply, for she knew, only too well, what the material significance of this mission meant to her henceforward.