“So that was it, was it?” said Andy. “Well, I think I’ll be going. My arm bothers me a bit.”
“Queer thing. If it hadn’t been for your bad arm we should never have had this talk. We should have been playing billiards.”
Queer thing! It was indeed, thought poor Andy as he went home. First he owed his meeting with Elizabeth at Marshaven to his fight with the carpenter, and now this conversation. He realised more acutely than ever that there are in the world no private black eyes or damaged arms. They all concern the Universe.
CHAPTER XIV
Any one who has ever gone home after a great shock, hurrying along, and keeping the tearing thoughts of it at bay until a place is reached where they can be fought alone, will know how Andy felt as he went back to the Vicarage that evening. And those who have not felt it themselves could never understand how he struck the match left for him by Mrs. Jebb in the dark hall, and lighted the candle and stumbled up to bed, still fighting off the realisation of what had happened.
But when he was in his own bedroom, and had locked the door, he sat down on his bed and let it come. It had to come.
So all this time there had been some sort of understanding between Elizabeth and Dick Stamford—or, if not exactly that, some arrangement of which she must have been aware. Mrs. Atterton was not the woman to keep such a thing to herself, even if her husband thought it politic to do so.
He—Andy—was only another of the suitors, who doubtless crowded round that pleasant, affluent household with the two charming daughters. It was his own idiotic conceit which had made him hope.
Then he remembered the look he had seen on Elizabeth’s face by the flaring blue and yellow at Marshaven, and he wondered if she did care, after all.