After all, when the man opened the door, it was Digby who entered the house. A man with a short beard was walking rapidly down the street.
"What is it? Anything wrong?" asked Lady Joan, quickly.
"No, no, nothing. Only I feel as though I had been persuading you against your will and for my own selfish reasons, and I came back to say so. There is nothing to keep you in England—nothing. Why not go abroad—to-morrow?"
"Oh. Is that all? How stupid of you to come back and look tragic just for that. And as if I should not go without waiting for your permission, Monsieur! Why, I have just been making out a route. Come and look."
He followed her finger mechanically with his eyes as she traced it over the map, and he made a great effort to compose himself. She exhausted France and Germany before she noticed his silence, and then she pushed away the Baedeker suddenly, and leaned back to try and see his face. He was standing a little behind her.
"I wish you'd say something, Digby. You look as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I have," he answered quietly, without taking his eyes from the top of her head.
"Whose was it?" she asked, half puzzled, half amused.
"My brother Jack's. He is in London."
He did not see that the color fled from her face, nor that she gasped a little as though she had a difficulty in breathing. What he saw was that she slowly turned round on her chair and looked to him beseechingly.