"Your father is out with the hounds. What is the use of your going back to an empty house?"
"I would rather be at home to-day Geoffrey."
"To think about Allan, and offer a thanksgiving for his safety?"
"I am full of thankfulness, and I am not ashamed of being glad."
She went over to Mrs. Wornock, who had been too much absorbed in her book to be aware that the lovers were quarrelling, till Suzette's brief good-bye and rapid departure startled her out of her tranquillity.
"Aren't you going to walk home with her, Geoffrey?" she asked when her son returned to the music-room, after escorting his sweetheart no further than the hall-door.
"No," he answered curtly; "we have had enough of each other for to-day."
He went to the library, where the morning papers were lying unread, and turned to the second page of the Times for the list of steamers, and then to the shipping intelligence.
Zanzibar? Yes, the Messageries Maritimes steamer Djemnah, was reported as arriving at Marseilles yesterday morning. Allan was in England, perhaps. If all went well with him, he would come by the first ship after the mail that brought his letter. The Rapide would bring him from Marseilles in time for the morning mail from Paris. He was in England—he whom Geoffrey had cruelly, treacherously deserted, helpless, and alone.
"All is fair in love," Geoffrey told himself; "but I wonder what Suzette will think of her future husband when she knows all? Her future husband! If I were but her actual husband, I could defy Fate. Who knows? something may have happened to hinder his return—a fit of fever, a difficulty on the road. Three more weeks, and he may come back safe and sound; it won't matter to me; I have no murderous thoughts about him. He may tell her the worst he can about me. Once my wife, I can hold and keep her in spite of the world. I will teach her that the man who sins for love's sake must be forgiven for the sake of his love."