She had reached her destination, a lawyer’s office.
“Will you let me come and see your mother?” he asked.
Polly looked at him doubtfully. How pretty she was with that questioning look on her face! She colored faintly as she met his eyes.
“Yes; you may come if you like,” she said. “I may as well tell you,” she added, with all her old frankness, “that I have hated you very badly for upsetting us all as you did that day; but I suppose you thought you were doing your duty. Anyhow, I will let you come and see my mother, if you promise to be very kind to her.”
And with that she took her hand from his and disappeared, leaving him with a mass of new and strange feelings that he did not seem equal to deal with in that moment.
Late that afternoon he found himself still thinking of Polly, as he reached the quiet hotel where he usually stayed, and he was only recalled from that thought by the arrival of a telegram from Grace, which was not easily comprehended at once.
“If you can come home to-morrow, please do,” Grace had written in her message. “Something important has happened, and I should like you to be here.”
This was sufficiently vague to trouble Val, and to drive his mind away from all other matters, and yet while he smoked and pondered as to what Grace’s message could possibly mean, the vision of Polly, as he had just seen her, hovered persistently in and among his thoughts.
It was almost provoking the way this girl and her eyes haunted him, and yet, such is the peculiarity of human minds, that Valentine searched and brought back that memory each time it tried to fade away!