"He saw them together in the red motor."
"Kissing," put in Jack rather brutally.
"Ah," she said composedly. And then, "Ah, yes, I see, but why Lloyd's curious behavior and Jerry's flight?"
"It's very mysterious."
"Yes, very." Here she rose as with a sudden sense of responsibility and brought the interview to an end. I think she read farther than I did. "At all events we know that they are all alive," she said with a smile. "Perhaps no great damage is done after all."
It seemed as though she were trying to deceive herself or us, but we made no comment, presently taking our departure.
It was not until many months later that I learned what had happened on that dreadful day. Jack Ballard and the Habbertons left Horsham Manor the following afternoon and it was many weeks before I saw Una in New York, for some instinct had restrained me; not until some time after I had Jerry's first letter, just a few lines written from somewhere in Manitoba, merely telling me that he was in good health and asking me not to worry. But brief as it was, this message cheered me inexpressibly.
I could not bring myself to go to Briar Hills again, but managed a meeting with Miss Gore, who told me that Marcia was in a more than usually fiendish temper most of the time—quite unbearable, in fact. She was going away to Bar Harbor, she thought, and the certainty of Miss Gore's tenure of office depended much upon Marcia's treatment of her. They had quarreled. To be a poor relation was one thing, to be a martyr another.
She couldn't understand Marcia's humor, moody and irascible by turns, and once when Miss Gore had mentioned Jerry's name she flew into a towering rage and threw a hair brush through a mirror—a handsome mirror she particularly liked.
Jerry's affair with Marcia was ended. There could be no possible doubt about that. Further than this Miss Gore knew nothing. It was enough. I was content, so content that in my commiseration I held her hand unduly long and she asked me what I was going to do with it, and not knowing I dropped it suddenly and made my exit I fear rather awkwardly. What could I have done with it? A fine woman that, but cryptic.