“I’ll—I’ll let you know.”
She tore herself away from him and fled through the window with one swift glance at Lord Clanfield, and the whispered words:—
“I’ve done my part. Do yours!”
CHAPTER XIII
More dead than alive, Audrey, when she had left Lord Clanfield’s house, hurried through the flower-garden, where she passed Geoffrey, indignant at her having given him the slip but not ready with a coherent protest, and came to a sudden standstill under the spreading branches of an old beech-tree, against the trunk of which she leaned for support.
Panting and breathless, too deeply agitated for connected thought, she cast longing eyes back at the old red-brick house, and felt the first pang of the parting with her husband.
She had left him so abruptly, not daring to stay, not daring to speak clearly to him, that she asked herself, in dismay, whether the bewilderment in which he must be would not more than counterbalance the joy he had felt in seeing her again.
Perhaps, after all, Lord Clanfield was right, and the meeting, unavoidable as it had been, might have done the invalid more harm than good.
In a state of fresh suspense, she asked herself whether she would not do better to go back again, to make inquiries about him, to make one more attempt to soften the viscount’s heart towards her.
But she knew, even while she thus debated with herself, that she would find no melting in the obstinate and autocratic old gentleman, whose prejudices as well as principles she had offended, and whose pride she had wounded by her counter-attacks.