After the bath she dressed slowly. The maid was exasperated, but Myra was quite heedless of the fact. The day was hardly begun, and there were so many hours in the day to be filled somehow with anything that would stave off thought. At eleven she ordered breakfast and sat down alone to it. The dishes went away untouched. She took a newspaper into the drawing-room, but she got no further than the door. It was there Guy had rejected the love she had offered him. She had no feeling of shame, only she could not remain there. She went instead to Lynton Hora's study. The room awakened another thought. What would the Commandatore say? He had told her to keep Guy, and Guy had gone. She remembered Hora's unuttered threat, but she had not great fear of his anger. Still she knew he would be angry, for Guy had offered to marry her, and she had refused the offer. It was not marriage she wanted, only to be loved, and she was compelled to refuse. But the Commandatore would blame her, for Guy had gone. Her lips drooped at the thought. Her spirit was broken.
Lynton Hora returned. She heard his step in the hall, the firm footstep followed by the shuffle of his lamed leg. But she did not attempt to move. He came straight to his own room. She did not even glance up as he entered.
"Where's Guy?" His voice was harsh.
"Gone," she replied without lifting her eyes.
For a minute no other word was spoken. Hora paced the room, up and down from door to window, and every time he turned to face Myra the scowl on his face deepened. Her manifest distress awakened no pity in him. He even marvelled that he had ever thought her beautiful. Her face was dull and expressionless, the lustre had gone from her hair, her figure drooped despondently. She recalled to his mind a dropsical old woman, clad in rags, with a palsied hand grasping at a bottle of gin in a dilapidated outhouse in Fancy Lane.
"When is he coming back?" he snarled again.
"Never."
Did her lips fashion the word? She had no warrant for making so definite a reply, but she knew that it was true.
Hora's anger nearly loosened a torrent of invective. But he refrained. What was the use? Myra had failed. Guy was lost to him. She was of no use to him now.
"If Guy has gone, you had better take yourself off, too," he said deliberately.