“I hope you will come again,” she said, and Anne replied nervously, noncommittal.
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But I am always so busy, and now that I have my treatment it is so much more difficult to get away....”
A kiss was avoided. Margaret went to the hall door with them, but not to the station. Gabriel had asked her not to do so.
“You ought to rest after yesterday.”
“Yes, of course she ought to rest,” Anne chorussed. There was a certain awkwardness in the farewells, somewhat mitigated by the luggage that occupied, so to speak, the foreground of the picture. As they drove away Anne nodded her head, threw a kiss. But neither Margaret nor Gabriel was conscious of her condescension, only of how long it was from now until next Friday.
“I am glad that is over,” Anne said complacently, as the carriage turned through the gates. “It was very trying, very trying indeed. In many ways she is quite a nice person. But not suited to us, in our quiet lives. Divorced too! I thought there was something last night. So ... so overdressed and peculiar. I am glad I came down before things had gone any further....”
“Further than what?” Gabriel asked her, waking up, if a little slowly, to the position. “Margaret and I are to be married in about a month’s time. You shall stay on in the flat if you wish. I think I shall be able to arrange.... Have you thought about any one you would like to share it with you?”
“Any one I should like! Share it with me?”
She was very shrill and he hushed her, although there was no one to hear but the flyman, who flicked at the trotting horse and wheezed indifferently. They got to the station long before Anne had taken in the fact that Gabriel was telling her his intention, not asking her advice. In the train; after they got home; and for many weary days she showed her unreasoning and ineffective opposition. It was not worth recording, or would not be but for the sympathetic interest taken by the Roopes, when Anne, reluctantly and under pressure, gave her brother’s approaching marriage as a reason for her own impaired health, and the failure of their ministrations. Anne felt it her duty to tell them this, and Mrs. Roope no less hers to make further enquiries; the results being more far-reaching than either of them could have anticipated. James Capel was a relation of the Roopes and it was natural they should be interested in the wife who had so flagrantly divorced him.
Ten days after Anne’s unlucky visit to Carbies, Gabriel received a bewildering telegram. He had been down once in the interval, but had found it unnecessary to speak of Anne, her vagaries or vapours. He stayed at Carbies because once having done so it seemed absurd that his room should remain empty. The very contrast between this visit and the last accentuated its intimate charm. Anne was not there, and Peter Kennedy’s services not being required, he had the good sense or taste to keep away. Margaret, closely questioned, admitted to having stayed a couple of days in bed, after the last week-end, admitted to weakness, but not illness.