She knew he had come straight from Laura's and was taking a short cut across the parade to his own lodgings, which were beyond the exit towards the north. He had come from no desire to see her. Still he might have spoken a word: he need not have gone through like that, as if it were only Lillie working the turnstile.
As she thought that, she felt a tear on her lips. Licking it off, she demanded furiously of herself how she could be such a fool as to cry about nothing. She must be run down. She must want a tonic.
Then she glanced up at the sound of a step approaching from the promenade, and there was Wilson's face, quite near, looking in at her little window. "You'll have a wet walk home, I'm afraid," he said.
"Yes." Her voice held a faint surprise, for he had already spoken once about the weather. "But I have an umbrella here."
"That's a good thing." He hesitated. "I might have lent you one, only it is rather large for a little girl," he added, speaking with a sort of artificial jocosity. "You must find that road rather dark and lonely on a night like this?" He paused again. "Don't you?"
For a moment or two she did not speak, and that silence somehow gave her answer an undue significance. "Yes," she said at last.
He opened his lips to speak, then suddenly his expression changed and he moved away from the window. "Wretched night! Wretched night!" he said, walking briskly on.
Caroline sat back in her chair, almost feeling as if she had been struck in the face—for a question had been asked and answered during that silence which involved all sorts of joys, fears, infidelities; then in a minute he banished them so utterly that she could scarcely believe they had ever been in question.
The next moment Mr. and Mrs. Graham were at the window. "Oh, dreadful night, is it not? You must feel the wind here."
Then they were merged into the shadow of the hall, warning each other as they went along against taking cold. Caroline saw what had happened now. Wilson had no doubt caught sight of the Grahams over his shoulder, and had not wished them to see him talking to her.