“Don’t think about it any more, you can’t help me. Hugh, where have you been all this long time?”
“I have been in Kent, at Starden.”
“Is—is that where she—”
“Joan? Yes! she lives there. I have been there, believing I can help her, and I shall help her!”
“You—you love her so?”
“Better than my life,” he said quietly, and never dreamed how those four words entered like a keen-edged sword into the heart of the girl who heard them.
She rose almost immediately.
“I am a foolish, silly girl, and—and, Hugh, I want you to forget what I told you. I shall forget it. I shall go back to—to Tom, and I will try and be worthy of him, try and be good-tempered and—all he wants me to be. Good-bye, Hugh!”
It seemed to him that she had changed suddenly, changed under his very eyes; the tenderness and the tears seemed to have vanished. She spoke almost coldly, and with a dignity he had never seen in her before, and then she went with scarce a look at him, leaving him sorely puzzled.