“But I tell you I have come down on purpose to—”
“All that is dead,” she said, in a tone that startled him.
“Then you never loved me!” he cried angrily.
“Heaven knows how well!” she said softly. “But you killed that love, Archibald Graves, and it can never be revived.”
She had held out her hand in token of farewell, but he had not taken it; now she let it fall, and before he could frame a fresh appeal she had turned, entered the little house, and the door closed behind her.
Archibald Graves remained standing gazing blankly at the closed door for a few moments, till he heard the click of a latch, and, turning sharply, he saw that the schoolmaster was leisurely walking his garden some fifty yards away. He was not watching the visitor—nothing of the kind; but the flowers in the little bed required looking to, and he remained there picking off withered leaves with his new gloves, and making himself very busy, in spite of a reminder from his mother that dinner was getting cold; and it was not until he had seen the stranger stride away that he entered his own place and sat thoughtfully down.
“If she thinks I am going to be thrown over like this,” said Archibald Graves to himself, “she is mistaken. She shall give way, and she shall leave this wretched place, or I’ll know the reason why. I wonder who that round-faced fellow was, and where I can get something to eat? By Jove, though, how she has altered! she quite touches a fellow like. Here, boy, where’s the principal inn?”
“Say?”
“Where’s the principal inn?” cried the visitor again, as the boy addressed stared at him wonderingly, his London speech being somewhat incomprehensible to juveniles at Plumton All Saints.
“Dunno.”