It was half an hour later that Corrie came into the room to join his host, carrying a letter in his hand.
"It is from Flavia," he volunteered. "She promised to write as soon as they got across, but she did better; she wrote this on board the steamer so that it was all ready to send." He sat down in his place and rested his arms on the table in the boyish attitude so associated with the massively rich dining-room of his father's house and the light-hearted group who had gathered there. "It was like her to do better than her word,—she doesn't know how to do less. One, one can tie up to her."
Gerard continued to gaze out the window opposite, his expression setting as if under a sudden exertion of self-control.
"I—well, I was always fond of my sister, but one learns a good deal more of people when things go wrong than when they just run along right. She asks me about you, how you are now."
"Miss Rose is too kind."
Some quality in the brief acknowledgment compelled a pause. The once self-assertive Corrie had become acutely sensitive to any suggestion of rebuff or disapproval. He could not in any way divine this rebuke was not for him, or know of the bruise he innocently had touched.
When the first course of the luncheon was served, Gerard came over to his seat and opened a new subject with his usual kindness of manner. It was a curious fact that, although Gerard had felt the awakening of love for Flavia Rose from his first glimpse of her, he never had aided Corrie for his sister's sake. Even when he had dragged himself from the overwhelming blackness of pain and the numbing effects of anæsthetics to defend the driver whose foul blow had struck him down, it was of Corrie alone he thought, not of Flavia, Corrie whom he had shielded from disgrace and open punishment. Man to man they had dealt together, no woman, however dear, entered between them. So when Flavia had seemed to fail her lover, again the separateness had held and Gerard never even imagined visiting her desertion on her brother. He had not resented Corrie's natural speech of her, now, but he could not listen to it; not yet.
"You will find your regular mechanician waiting for you when you go out again," he observed. "You can learn much with him, if you choose, Corrie, although he is no Rupert. Take your machine where and how you please; it is all practice. I will see you again at dinner, unless you grow tired before then and would like to come up to the draughting-room to meet my chief engineer and designer."
Corrie looked down, crumpling a fold of the table cloth between nervous fingers.
"Gerard, do they know?" he asked, his voice low. "I mean, how you were hurt and what Rupert accuses me of?"