Three days later she had heard the conversation.
Of course it was absurd—manifestly so—and yet, and yet—
After a miserable twenty-four hours of fighting against her own uneasiness, she paid the flying visit to Lorraine, to see if she could glean any light on the gossip from her, only to return to the office baffled and tormented.
It was the enigmatical sentence that pressed forward now, instead of the thrilling confession that he loved her. Was it possible he was indeed so base as to love her and tell her in the very same week that he had asked another woman to be his wife?
And if so, what had prompted him? What was in his mind? Why had he not left things as they were, and refrained both from the kiss and the confession?
And then above her tortured feelings rose the triumphant thought, goading and pleasing at the same time: “Whether it is true or not, he loves me—not her, the heiress, but me—Hal Pritchard—the peniless City worker.”
CHAPTER XXXI
In the evening came the party at Dick Bruce’s home, and it was necessary, she knew, to thrust all recollection of Sir Edwin aside, in order to give rise to no questioning and appear as usual.
So she dressed herself with special care, rubbed a pink tinge on to her white cheeks, bathed and refreshed eyes dulled by worry and shadows, and made her appearance, looking, if anything, a little more radiant than usual.
“By Jove! you look stunning, Hal,” was her jovial uncle’s warm greeting. “Who’d ever have thought, to see the ugly little imp of a small child you were, that you would grow up into a fashionable, striking woman? I congratulate you. When’s the happy man coming along?”