"I find—I feel—I dislike in him—nothing. He is nothing to me. Why should my opinion be of any consequence about him?"
"You speak in such a hard voice, Leo. And you look so hard and unsympathetic whenever Paul is mentioned. Can't you tell me—you might surely tell me——?"
"I wish you would tell me when he departs? One gets tired of people in the state Paul is in, that's all."
"Are you a little—envious, dear Leo? Such happiness——"
"Yes, that's it. Such happiness—Maud is welcome to it," cried Leo, with a laugh. "Very welcome, most welcome; but it's all the parade, the flutter—however, it will soon be over, thank Heaven!"—she subjoined under her breath.
No more was to be got out of her, and Sue, baffled and repelled, went her way.
She was conscious, however, of a sense of relief when the very same afternoon Paul's departure for a season was announced. He had arranged for this without consulting any one; but Maud was satisfied that business demanded his presence in London, and that there were also a few old friends to whom as a bachelor he wished to bid farewell.
It did not appear very clearly where these friends lived, and indeed an exacting fiancée might have found the brief announcement vague and unsatisfactory, but Maud's feelings were thus conveyed to her own people in private: "Paul has so much sense of what is proper and correct, that it really amounts to an intuition. I daresay he has an idea that when there is so much for me to attend to, it is better that I should be free to give myself up to it. Certainly it is a little distracting to have to remember he is waiting for a walk or ride, when one's head is in a whirl with other things."
Once she had asked Leo to take the walk instead of her—she did not do it again. Leo, with blazing eyes, declined point-blank.
"Take your man off your hands? Not I. If you're tired of him——"