There was a slight movement about Amy’s lips as these words were uttered: she kept her eyes down, and waited before replying.
‘The case is too delicate, I fear, for my advice.’
‘Yes, I feel it; and perhaps I oughtn’t to have spoken of it at all. Well, I’ll go back to my scribbling. I am so very glad to have seen you again.’
‘It was good of you to take the trouble to come—whilst you have so much on your mind.’
Again Jasper held the white, soft hand for a superfluous moment.
The next morning it was he who had to wait at the rendezvous; he was pacing the pathway at least ten minutes before the appointed time. When Marian joined him, she was panting from a hurried walk, and this affected Jasper disagreeably; he thought of Amy Reardon’s air of repose, and how impossible it would be for that refined person to fall into such disorder. He observed, too, with more disgust than usual, the signs in Marian’s attire of encroaching poverty—her unsatisfactory gloves, her mantle out of fashion. Yet for such feelings he reproached himself, and the reproach made him angry.
They walked together in the same direction as when they met here before. Marian could not mistake the air of restless trouble on her companion’s smooth countenance. She had divined that there was some grave reason for this summons, and the panting with which she had approached was half caused by the anxious beats of her heart. Jasper’s long silence again was ominous. He began abruptly:
‘You’ve heard that Harold Biffen has committed suicide?’
‘No!’ she replied, looking shocked.
‘Poisoned himself. You’ll find something about it in today’s Telegraph.’