As the procession started toward the waiting car, Gordon, who followed close by the English actress, inquired:
"Where shall we go to-day?"
"Really, I don't think we shall have room for you to-day, Sanford," said Mrs. Dainton, somewhat coldly, pausing at the top of the steps while the maids, assisted by the footman and Victor, helped Fuzzy-Wuzzy tenderly into the car.
"That's what you have said for the past three days," Gordon cried tensely. "And yet I brought my own machine and my own chauffeur out here from New York just to please you."
"And you are pleasing me a great deal, Sanford, by letting me go alone."
"Will nothing I do ever move you?" inquired Gordon. Then, as he saw she was more interested in the way Johanna was holding the Pomeranian, he added fiercely: "Once you would have answered differently."
Mrs. Dainton turned on him, her manner a strange mingling of sadness and regret.
"Ah, yes, once," she said softly. "I loved you then without any thought of the future, and I have paid for it with many, many bitter years of repentance. Now, after all these years—years when you seemed to have forgotten my very existence and the thing which you had once called love—I return to America, praised and honored by those who in the old days had treated me so lightly, you among the rest."
"That's not true," broke in Gordon. "I always loved you."
"But we parted," continued Mrs. Dainton, bitterly. "And if I had returned, needing your help instead of being able to reject all that you can give, would you have come to me again?"