“Shall I?” thought Jordan as her ladyship turned away. “We’ll see about that.”
Again Tom opened his eyes, and he saw that face above him, and even as he looked the head was bent lower and lower till once again the red lips touched his own.
“Marjorie, is it only pity?” he whispered.
But she shook her head. “It is love, all my love—I know now. It is all ended. I know the truth. Oh, Tom, it—it was you all the time, and after all it was only you!”
CHAPTER XLVI
“—SHE HAS GIVEN!”
Never so slowly as to-day had John Everard driven the six and a half miles that divided Buddesby and Little Langbourne from Starden. Never had his frank and open and cheerful face been so clouded and overcast. Many worries, many doubts and fears and uncertainties, were at work in John Everard’s mind.
No doubts and uncertainties of anyone but of himself. It was himself—his own feelings, his own belief in himself, his own belief in his love that he was doubting. So he drove very slowly the six and a half miles to Starden, because he had many questions to ask of himself, questions to which answers did not come readily.
“Gipsy is right, she always is,” he thought. “She is finer-minded, better, more generous than I am. Her mind could not harbour one doubt of anyone she loved, and I—” He frowned.
Helen Everard, from an upper window, saw his arrival, and watching him as he drove up the approach to the house, marked the frown on his brow, the lack of his usual cheerfulness.