She turned sick, and white even to the lips. In one glance, as women will, she had taken in every detail of his face and person, had marked that the one seemed devoid of care, the other well dressed as usual. Like a stab came the conviction, that ruin to him meant only a certain amount of personal inconvenience, irrespective of any extraneous sorrow or vexation; and in this she misjudged him, not quite understanding a nature she had unwittingly chosen for the god of her idolatry.
Though they passed each other so quickly, she stretched her arms out and spoke his name, but Daisy's whole attention was engrossed by a pretty horse-breaker in difficulties on his other side. Satanella felt, as she rolled on, that he had not recognised her, and that if she acted up to her own standard of right, this miserable glimpse must be their last meeting, for she ought never to see him again.
"He'll be sure to call, poor fellow!" she murmured, when she reached her own door. So it is fair to suppose she had been thinking of him for a mile and a quarter. "I should like to wish him good-bye, really for the last time. But no, no! Honour, even among thieves. And I'm sure he deserves it, that kind, noble, generous old man. Oh! I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!" Then she paid the cabman (more than his fare) told her servant, in a strange, hoarse voice, that "she was at home to nobody this afternoon—nobody, not even Mrs. Lushington!" and so ran fiercely upstairs, and locked herself into her room.
"SOLDIER BILL"
Daisy placidly smoking, pursued the even tenor of his way, thinking of the pretty horse-breaker more than anything else; while disapproving, in a calm, meditative mood, of her hat, her habit, her bridle, and the leather tassels that danced at her horse's nose.
The particular business Mr. Walters had at present on hand in London, or rather Kensington must be explained.