He patted her shoulder as she lifted her head, looking at her with his keen grey eyes that held humour as well as sympathy.
"You'll have plenty of solitude in this establishment, anyhow," he said. "You can soak yourself in it all day long. There's a library that may amuse you, but that's all I can offer in the way of entertainment."
"Oh, I don't want entertainment," Maud assured him.
"You're singularly unlike your mother," was Uncle Edward's comment.
He did not ask her how her mother was faring, and she did not feel that the moment for speaking of her affairs had arrived. There was a touch of the formidable about the old man, all his kindness to her notwithstanding; and she felt too tired and ill for a difficult discussion. She wanted to lie down and rest for a long, long time.
This visit to Uncle Edward meant deliverance to her from a yoke too heavy to be borne. All through her illness she had yearned for, striven for, this escape; and because of this intense longing of hers, Capper, realizing that disappointment could but retard her progress, had set himself to further her desire.
Jake had offered no opposition to it. She had scarcely seen Jake since the night of the races, and not once had they been alone together. He had bidden her farewell that morning in Capper's presence briefly, almost coldly. There had not been even so much as a touch of hands between them at parting. He had got into the carriage after them, it was true, and had wrapped a rug about her knees; but he had done it without any personal solicitude or show of sympathy. Only at the very last, just as the train started, had he looked her in the face; and then as it were half against his will he had turned his eyes upon her.
And the memory of that look had gone with her throughout the journey; it was to haunt her for many days with a strange poignancy. For the red-brown eyes had held no mastery, no passion, only a dumb misery that had somehow gone to her heart. Why had he looked at her like that? Why was he so unhappy? Had he wanted to speak to her and failed for lack of words? Did he blame himself at all for what had happened? Did he desire in any way to make amends?
She had thought that to escape from his proximity would have been sheer relief, but now that she actually found herself free from all possibility of seeing him she was curiously perturbed by the thought of him. She had an odd little regret that she had not waved a hand to him as the train had borne her away. Just a friendly wave to show him that she harboured no resentment any longer! She might have done it, but for an overpowering shyness that had prevented any expression of farewell. Ill though she was, ill and weary, she could have made him that sign of friendship and been none the worse for it.
But reserve had held her back. It towered between them, a barrier more insurmountable than it had ever been before. And behind that reserve her whole being crouched in fear. For she had begun to tell herself over and over, over and over, like a panic-stricken child, that once away from him she could never return, never, face again that which she had faced.