“Did she say anything?”
“Just that, sir; no answer.”
Then David, in a mighty wrath and fume, dashed off another note.
Very well, be it so. I return to London. God help you if you marry that man! You will sink to the pit, and the angels alone will be able to lift you therefrom. Let there be no error this time. I leave for London at one fifteen, P.M. If you want me you must either detain me now or come to me in London.
Back went the postmistress’s sister, marveling at the strangeness of these one-sided missives between the young woman of the manor and a handsome young man at the Feathers. Being seventeen, she took David’s side as against Violet. So she added, on her own account, when she saw the white-faced aristocrat in the house, the explanatory statement that “the young gentleman seemed to be very much upset at receiving no reply.”
Poor Violet, in whom loyalty was hereditary, could not break her word. But she did say: “I have no message to-day; but I know Mr. Harcourt’s address.”
That was the only crumb of comfort vouchsafed to David. Away he went at quarter-past one, nor did the volcano in him show any sign of subsidence when he reached the gloom and shadows of No. 7 Eddystone Mansions.
For a little drop of acutest poison had been poured into his ear by the gossip of the village. In the bar overnight he heard yokels talking of the need of money at the big house, how Van Hupfeldt’s wealth would make the flowers grow again in Rigsworth. He smiled at the conceit then; now he knew that deadly nightshade was sown in the garden of his hopes, for he imagined that money had proved more potent than love.
It was a remarkable thing that of all the pictures in the flat he had left untouched the portrait in chalk which hung over the dining-room fireplace. It savored too much of sacrilege to disturb that ethereal face; but David was in far too savage a mood to check at sentiment during those dark hours. He surveyed the portrait almost vindictively, though had he been less bitter he might have seen a reassuring smile in the parted lips. So it came to pass that, after eating some dry bread, which was the only food he found in the larder, he lit a pipe, looked at the picture again, and yielded to the impulse to examine it.