"But I can't write to him if he doesn't write to me. It's you he bothers, not me. He has never said one syllable to me that all the world mightn't hear, since I came back from the Chesters. You can't expect me to go out of my way to refuse a man who has never asked me. 'He either fears his fate too much'----"
"Perhaps he's pretty certain he'd 'lose it all' poor chap," said Tony gently; "I can sympathise with him."
Lallie made no answer.
He took her to the station, bought her papers, spoke to the guard, and compassed her about with all the thousand-and-one observances that men love to lavish on women for whom they care.
As the train began to move, Lallie leant out of the window.
"If you look," she began, then crimsoned to the roots of her hair, and the train bore her from his sight.
"If you look--" Tony repeated over and over again as he walked slowly home--what could she have been going to say?
He went into the town and restlessly did several quite unnecessary errands at various shops. It was tea-time when he got back, and he had it with Miss Foster in the drawing-room. When she had gone he went into his study and sat down at his desk.
On his blotting-pad lay a volume of Shakespeare. It was not one of his own little leather edition that he always used, but a fat, calf-bound book from the set in the drawing-room.
He lifted it and saw that it contained one of Lallie's markers--a piece of white ribbon with a green four-leaved shamrock embroidered at each end. He opened it at the place marked, and there was a faint pencil line against the following passage: