Could Hugh Alston have seen her now, her face softened by the gladness and the gratitude that had come to her, he would have seen in her the woman of his dreams.
The banknote would clear everything. She did not scruple to accept it in the spirit of affection in which it was offered. It would have been churlish and false pride to refuse.
He had said that he would send for her when the morning came; he had taken it for granted that she would go, and there was no need to answer the letter. And when the morning came she was ready and waiting, her things packed, her last bill to Mrs. Wenham paid.
The maid came tapping on the door.
“Someone waiting for you, miss, in the drawing-room.”
Joan went down. It would be the old fellow, the warm-hearted old man himself come to fetch her! She entered the big ugly room, with its dingy wall-paper and threadbare carpet, its oleographs in tarnished frames, its ancient centre ottoman, its elderly piano and unsafe, uncertain chairs. How she hated this room, where of evenings the ‘paying guests’ distorted themselves.
But she came into it now eagerly, with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and hand held out, only to draw back with sudden chill.
It was Mr. Philip Slotman who rose from the ottoman.
“Joan, I’ve come to tell you I am sorry, sorry and ashamed,” he said. “I was mad. I want you to forgive me.”
“There need be no talk of forgiveness,” she said. “You are the type of man one can perhaps forget—never forgive!”