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Jocelyn came home on the evening of the third day. He hadn’t found a house, and seemed dispirited about that, and looked a great deal at Salvatia, Mrs. Luke thought,—almost as if he had never seen her before; indeed he looked at her so much that he hardly had eyes or attention for anything else.
Mrs. Luke didn’t like it.
Certainly the girl was quite extraordinarily beautiful that evening, and seemed even more alight than usual with the strange, surprising flame-effect she somehow made, but one would have supposed that these outwardnesses, once one knew that they were not the symbols of any corresponding inwardnesses, could hardly be sufficient for a man like Jocelyn.
A little pang of something that hurt—it couldn’t of course be jealousy, for the very word in such a connection was ludicrous—shot through Mrs. Luke’s heart when she more than once caught a look in her boy’s eyes as they rested on his wife that she had never seen in any man’s eyes when they rested on her herself, but which she nevertheless instantly recognised. The love-look. The look of burning, impatient passion. She had been loved, but never like that, never with that intent adoration.
Sally sat quietly there, neither speaking nor moving, but over her face rippled gladness. Nice, she thought, to get Usband back. It hadn’t been half awful without him. Finished now, though; wouldn’t happen again. ‘Let’s forget it,’ she said to herself.
And that night, after every one was in bed, Mrs. Luke heard cautious steps creaking up the stairs, and the door of the room Sally slept in across the little landing was softly opened, and some one went in and softly shut it again; and Mrs. Luke didn’t like it at all, and ended by crying herself to sleep.
Next day, however, Jocelyn was restored to the self she knew, and was reasonable and detached. They talked over the house in Cambridge question, and he quite agreed with his mother that when he went up, which he was due to do in nine days time, while he continued in his spare moments there to search for one she would keep Sally with her at Almond Tree Cottage.
‘And even if you find one, dearest,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘remember we can’t afford to take it till I have got rid of this one.’
‘Quite, Mother,’ said Jocelyn—so reasonable, so completely detached.