“Don't, Lady Barbara; from your mother, yes; not from you!”
“It's what I believe. Good-bye!” And she went out.
She had told him that she did not want him to go—not yet; and he was going!
But no sooner had she got outside, after that strange outburst, than she bit her lips to keep back an angry, miserable feeling. He had been rude to her, she had been rude to him; that was the way they had said good-bye! Then, as she emerged into the sunlight, she thought: “Oh! well; he doesn't care, and I'm sure I don't!”
She heard a voice behind her.
“May I get you a cab?” and at once the sore feeling began to die away; but she did not look round, only smiled, and shook her head, and made a little room for him on the pavement.
But though they walked, they did not at first talk. There was rising within Barbara a tantalizing devil of desire to know the feelings that really lay behind that deferential gravity, to make him show her how much he really cared. She kept her eyes demurely lowered, but she let the glimmer of a smile flicker about her lips; she knew too that her cheeks were glowing, and for that she was not sorry. Was she not to have any—any—was he calmly to go away—without——And she thought: “He shall say something! He shall show me, without that horrible irony of his!”
She said suddenly:
“Those two are just waiting—something will happen!”
“It is probable,” was his grave answer.