Again he protested hastily.
"Oh, but there's no hurry about that, I assure you. I only wanted to save trouble."
While she was away he stood before the fire, gazing absently into space and scarcely moving a muscle. The ham and boiled eggs appeared, and a little more animation became apparent, but it was not a lively feast. She talked for a little in an ordinary, cheerful way, just as though there was no very special subject for conversation; but he seemed too absent-minded and silent to respond even to these overtures, except with a brief smile and a briefer word. They had both been quite silent for about five minutes, when he suddenly said in a constrained manner, but with quite a different intonation—
"Well, I am afraid our ways part now. What are you going to do next?"
"I've been wondering," she said; "and I think if Mrs Craigie still wants me I ought to go back to her."
"Back to the Craigies!" he exclaimed. "And become—er—a governess again?"
"It will be rather dull at first," she laughed; "but one can't have such adventures as this every day, and I really have treated the Craigies rather badly. You see you told Mr Craigie the truth about my desertion of them, and they may forgive me. If they do, and if they still need me, I feel I simply must offer my services."
"It's very good of you."
She laughed again.
"It is at least as much for my own interest as Mrs Craigie's. I have nowhere else to go to and nothing else to do."