“I—but—”
“You will meet him, Joan, but I shall be there also. Tell me where!”
She described the place, and he remembered it and knew it well enough.
“I shall be there, remember that. Go without fear—answer as you decide, but remember you pay nothing—nothing. And then I,”—he paused, and smiled for the first time—“I will do the paying.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE DROPPING OF THE SCALES
It was like turning back the pages of a well-loved book, a breath out of the past. For this afternoon it seemed to John Everard that his little friend, almost sister, had come back to him.
And yet it seemed to Johnny, who studied her quietly, that here was one whom he had never known, never seen before. The child had been dear to him as a younger sister, but the child was no more.
And to-day, for these few brief hours, Ellice gave herself up to a happiness that she knew could be but fleeting. To-day she would be the butterfly, living and rejoicing in the sun. The darkness would come soon enough, but to-day was hers and his.
How far in his boldness John Everard drove that little car he did not quite realise, but it was a slight shock to him to read on a sign-post “Holsworth four miles,” for Holsworth was more than forty miles from Little Langbourne.