“For good?”
“For several years, I expect.”
“Why do you go?”
“Well, you see,” he began slowly, “it’s a very good opening for a man who wants to get on, and I want that even more now than I ever wanted it before.” She waited, and he continued: “Engineering is rather overdone in England, and it’s very hard work to get any kind of a real footing at all. The firm is opening a big, new branch in Africa, and they have offered me the managership. It is a very good thing, and I have accepted it.”
“But still,” reasoned Paddy, “you were all right as you were before.”
He smiled a little.
“No, that’s just it. I wasn’t all right. You see, Miss Adair, there comes a time in a man’s life when he suddenly wakes up to the fact that he’d desperately like a home of his own, and that makes him think more seriously of the pounds, shillings, and pence. I want my home to be right in the country, too,” he added whimsically, half to himself, “if possible, where there are mountains and a loch and plenty of fishing and shooting.”
Paddy said nothing, but she felt a queer little thrill all down her back. She turned her head away and stared hard into the glowing coals. She knew his eyes were fixed searchingly on her face, but she would not look round, nor give him the chance to see the consciousness in her own. He leaned back presently with a little sigh.
“I’d rather have thought of you running wild at Omeath still,” he said, “but it can’t be helped, and I shall have to make the best of it. Perhaps, sometimes you’ll be glad to feel there’s some one thinking of you, some one awfully sorry for you, across the sea. At least, I hope you won’t forget altogether?”
Still Paddy kept her face averted.