She trembled as he added, in a gentle, yet cold manner:
'Excuse me, but it were better to pay my first visit to him at his club.'
Chute, who had been all tenderness to Ida, could not help this manner to Clare, for Violet's remarks about Desmond seemed to corroborate those of Vane.
Unstable of purpose, he held Clare's hand, and she permitted him to do so, with a slow, regretful clasp. Why should he not do so, and why should she withdraw her slender fingers?
As he descended the staircase, he heard the name of the Honourable Harvey Desmond announced with his card, and the rivals passed each other in the marble vestibule, the former with the easy air of a daily, at least a frequent, visitor; the other with that of one whose mission was over.
'On what terms are he and Clare if the clubs link their names together?' thought Trevor, bitterly and sadly, as he came forth.
Did she, after all, love himself still?
He was almost inclined to flatter himself that she did so.
Worldly or monetary matters were unchanged between them, as at that cruel time when he lost her; so perhaps he had only returned to London to stand idly by and see her become the wife of Desmond!
After all that had passed between them, after all that seemed gone for ever, after the bitterness and mortification he had endured, the years of hopeless separation in a distant land, he could scarcely realize, while walking along the sunny and crowded pavement of Piccadilly, the assured fact that he had again seen and spoken with Clare Collingwood; and that the whole interview had not been one of those day-dreams in which, when in Beverley's society, he had been so often wont to indulge when quartered far up country in the burning East.