“Ah, well,” she said, half-wistfully, “I expect it’s fortunate that such courage as I have may never be put to the test.”
Though reticence was difficult, Vane made no comment. He had spoken unguardedly already, and he had decided that caution was desirable. As it happened, an automobile came up when he restarted his team, and he looked round as he drove on again.
“It’s curious that I never heard the thing,” he said.
“I didn’t either,” said Evelyn, and added, as if any explanation were needed: “I was too engrossed in the trees. But I think Miss Horsfield was in it.”
“Was she?” said Vane in a very casual manner, and Evelyn, for no reason that she was willing to admit, was pleased.
She had not been mistaken. Jessie Horsfield was in the automobile, and she had had a few moments in which to study Vane and his companion. The man’s look and the girl’s expression had struck her as significant; and her lips set ominously tight as the car sped on. She felt she almost hated Vane, and there was no doubt that she entirely hated the girl at his side.
[CHAPTER XXIV—JESSIE STRIKES.]
It was the afternoon before Vane’s departure for the north, and Evelyn, sitting alone for the time being in Mrs. Nairn’s drawing-room, felt disturbed by the thought of it. She sympathised with his object, but she supposed there was a certain risk attached to the journey, and that troubled her. In addition to this there was another point on which she was not altogether pleased. She had twice seen Vane acknowledge a bow from a very pretty girl whose general appearance suggested that she did not belong to Evelyn’s own walk of life, and that very morning she had noticed him crossing a street in the young woman’s company. Vane, as it happened, had met Kitty Blake by accident and had asked her to accompany him on a visit to Celia.
Evelyn did not think she was of a jealous disposition, and jealousy appeared irrational in the case of a man whom she had dismissed as a suitor; but the thing rankled in her mind. While she considered it, Jessie Horsfield entered the room.
“I’m here by invitation, to join Vane’s other old friends in giving him a good send-off,” she explained.