“I will come with you.”
She glanced at him with slight alarm, and then at Alymer. Denton saw the look and seemed surprised. Hal’s eyes asked Alymer what they were to do. He spoke with an effort.
“I expect Miss Vivian would be glad to see so old and great a friend as Lord Denton.”
“Of course she would,” he said decidedly—and to Hal:
“What time do we leave Charing Cross?”
Hal spoke very little on the journey. A nameless dread weighed on her spirit, and a haunting fear for Lorraine. She was oppressed by a sense of deep sadness for the brilliant, succesful woman she had loved since her school days, who was now, after all her triumphs, alone in that little foreign village, caught in a maze of tangles and perplexities which offered no peaceful solution.
She could not understand Alymer’s part at all, but she was convinced Lorraine’s absorbing devotion to him was not reciprocated in like manner. If Lorraine learnt this as soon as she recovered, what did the future hold for her again but more vain dreams, and bitter hopes that could never see fulfilment?
She felt a little pitifully that life was very hard and difficult, even when one had a fine courage and will to face it; and a leaden pall of sorrow seemed to fold itself round her.
What of Dudley and his hopeless love? Ethel and her inconsolable grief? Sir Edwin, and his secret bitterness? the gaunt music-teacher and her barren, joyless life?