“She’s an odd girl,” went on Arthur. “The other day I met her for the first time for months at the Stores. I went there to get some things for mother, and I ran against Rachel. She was beautifully dressed, looked awfully smart, and seemed quite confused at meeting me. She didn’t answer when I asked her where she was living, but said her mother was at Brighton and her sister at school in Richmond. And I asked her why she hadn’t been to see us, and she said she had meant to come, but had been busy. And she promised to come last Sunday, but she didn’t.”
“Is she living in town?”
“I don’t know; but she’s doing well, anyhow. She looked remarkably prosperous. She puzzled me altogether.”
Gerard, whose interest in Rachel Davison had been revived and strengthened by this meeting, and these details concerning the girl who had roused his keen admiration, called next Sunday at the Aldingtons, but only to be disappointed and still further puzzled by the accounts he received of Rachel Davison.
For Rose had met her, shopping at Marshall and Snelgrove’s, and Rachel, who was exquisitely dressed and accompanied by a well-dressed but undistinguished-looking man had cut her dead.
“She’s married, I suppose, and to some sweep whom she doesn’t want to introduce to us,” suggested Arthur.
And Gerard’s spirits ran down to zero at the thought.
CHAPTER II
It was two months later than this meeting, and nearly eight months after his first meeting with Rachel Davison, when Gerard Buckland, as he was “doing” the Academy with a listless air on a hot afternoon in June, came suddenly upon a sight which at once changed his listlessness into excitement of the most violent kind.
In front of him, with half a dozen Provincial and suburban loungers in between, were two girls, both beautifully dressed, of whom Gerard at once recognized the elder to be Rachel Davison.