And adieu for evermore.'"
"What a heartless, unromantic, roving wretch!" remarked Lady George, in the pause which followed the refrain. "I hope he was jilted after all by the heiress; there generally is an heiress in these cases." Then, becoming aware of the possible indiscretion of her words, she looked at her brother hurriedly.
"In that case he married and lived happily ever afterwards; at least, that is what I should have done in his case. And I don't think he was so heartless, after all. He told the truth. It isn't as if he had sneaked away without saying good-bye."
Marjory rose from the piano with a little shrug of her shoulders.
"I must say good-night, at any rate, Lady George, and sneak up to see Mrs. Vane; for it is getting late, and you have all to be up so early."
Paul, standing at the door holding it open for her to pass through, was the last of the group to whom she had to give the conventional farewell.
"Good-bye," she said, feeling above her real regret a relief that this was the end.
"Auf-wieder-sehn," he replied. That was what Tom had said. As she ran upstairs to Mrs. Vane's room she was telling herself passionately that she did not want to see Captain Macleod again--that she would rather he went out of her life altogether, and cease to make her wonder at his changeful moods.
"Entrez," said the soft voice to her knock, and the next moment she felt herself in an atmosphere in which she had never been before. The semi-darkness of the pink-shaded light, the littered dressing-table, the soft perfume, the thousand and one evidences of an almost sensuous ease were to her absolutely novel. And the small figure, nestling in the armchair, so dainty in its laces and little velvet-shod feet. All that meant something she had never grasped before, something which attracted and yet repelled her.
"How pretty it is," she said, in sudden impulse, as her fingers stroked one of the soft folds almost caressingly. Mrs. Vane's hand went out swiftly, and drew hers closer.