She drank two full glasses of wine before she told him her news. He took it with the expression she knew so well—tightening his lips and staring a little upward. Then he said quietly:
“When?”
“November, Dad.”
A shudder, not to be repressed, went through Winton. The very month! And stretching his hand across the table, he took hers and pressed it tightly.
“It'll be all right, child; I'm glad.”
Clinging to his hand, Gyp murmured:
“I'm not; but I won't be frightened—I promise.”
Each was trying to deceive the other; and neither was deceived. But both were good at putting a calm face on things. Besides, this was “a night out”—for her, the first since her marriage—of freedom, of feeling somewhat as she used to feel with all before her in a ballroom of a world; for him, the unfettered resumption of a dear companionship and a stealthy revel in the past. After his, “So he's gone to Ostend?” and his thought: 'He would!' they never alluded to Fiorsen, but talked of horses, of Mildenham—it seemed to Gyp years since she had been there—of her childish escapades. And, looking at him quizzically, she asked:
“What were you like as a boy, Dad? Aunt Rosamund says that you used to get into white rages when nobody could go near you. She says you were always climbing trees, or shooting with a catapult, or stalking things, and that you never told anybody what you didn't want to tell them. And weren't you desperately in love with your nursery-governess?”
Winton smiled. How long since he had thought of that first affection. Miss Huntley! Helena Huntley—with crinkly brown hair, and blue eyes, and fascinating frocks! He remembered with what grief and sense of bitter injury he heard in his first school-holidays that she was gone. And he said: