Gwen set her teeth.
“You are not fair,” she said. “Lawrence has behaved like a brute to-day, and I dare say it isn’t the first time, but he has neither gambled nor drunk for years, and there have been times when he was goodness itself to his mother.”
“And few and far enough between too,” sneered Kathleen. “I’m only thankful that he hasn’t got engaged to any friend of mine; for if I cared for her very much, I’d sooner see her in her grave than married to Lawrence.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Gwen sharply, and then stopped short, suddenly remembering she was a guest, and the dinner finished in a constrained silence.
“Bob and I will go on to Dublin to-morrow,” she told Kathleen later, “and don’t bother about us this evening. We will look after each other, and you stay with Mrs Blake.”
When Doreen and her fiancé returned, she made up some sort of a tale to them, and then persuaded every one to go to bed early, that Lawrence, if he returned, might come in and go to his room unnoticed.
She did not go to bed herself, however, but sat up with her door open, waiting for him. At two o’clock in the morning she heard his latchkey in the front door, and went down bravely to meet him.
When Lawrence saw her he glared at her angrily, but she took no notice, though inwardly shocked at the unspeakable change on his face since the morning. He was deathly white, with an almost tigerish expression, and she knew he had been drinking.
“I couldn’t rest until I knew you had come in,” she said, trying to speak naturally.
“What did you suppose I should do?” with a bitter sneer. “Go and drown myself, or cross to England with a pistol! No, thank you! I’m not that sort. I shall not oblige any Police News with a paragraph.”