What a day it was. He couldn’t do a stroke of work. He felt like nothing on earth after the whisky. His chief was sarcastic. Everything went wrong. At five he was starting for Waterloo when Mrs. Mitcham rang him up to say her mistress was safely back and resting.
Safely back? How had she managed that, with no train that he knew of?
He flew home. Catherine, her face beautifully rearranged, was lying in the shaded drawing-room.
‘Why, darling—how? When——?’ he cried, rushing across to her.
He didn’t wait for an answer. There was no time for one before he had picked her up and locked her in his arms.
Oh, how blessed this was—oh, oh how blessed this was, sighed Catherine, her cheek against his, her eyes shut, safe in heaven again.
The great feature of Maria Rome’s treatment was that it was husband-proof. Nothing came off.
XII
Catherine made much of Virginia’s fainting.
‘What she want to faint for?’ asked Christopher sceptically. ‘A great girl like that.’