CHAPTER XXXIX: END OF THREE VISIONS: THE STRANGER'S
Immediately after the funeral, I left the desolate Château, the desolate Countess, the country of France soon to be made desolate, and, after nearly four years' absence, returned to my native land.
On Southampton Quay Lord Tawborough awaited me.
I saw him from the boat before I landed, and he saw me. I braved myself for the greeting: I would be pleasant, natural, would look him frankly in the eyes. I came down the little landing-bridge, we shook hands, for one half-instant of time I looked into his eyes; then self-consciousness and joy rolled through me like a tide, my heart beat unreasonably, I forgot who or where I was. When I got over the worst of it, I was conscious of how foolish I had been, and I flushed to think what he might be thinking. I still dared not look. He was busying himself with my luggage. We got into a cab, into a train....
If it was not love that filled me, what was it? If it was not love that I had seen for that swift second in his eyes, what was its name? Or was I once more judging others by my romantic self-conscious self, lending them looks and emotions they had never sought to borrow? Yet had he made this journey to Southampton for cousinship's sake, or through courtesy to my Grandmother, or for my mother's sake—or for any sake but mine? I knew that he had not. Then I must tell him I was "another's." How—without absurdity, immodesty? For I did not know, by any solid sign or certain token, that he loved me at all. He sat in the corner of the carriage reading his newspaper. I sat in my corner reading mine—the first English newspaper I had ever touched.
It was the last stage of our journey; we had changed at Exeter on to the North Devon line. He suddenly threw his newspaper aside and looked me bravely in the face, though he could not completely master his trembling eyes.
"Well, Miss Traies" (my name since my twenty-first birthday, when the lawyers had slain Miss Lee), "what are your plans? What are you going to do with your life? What is the program?" Would-be banteringly.
"You know," I replied. "I am coming home to help and look after my Grandmother and my Great-Aunt."
"They are old."