"Aunt Eliza dear, you're the biggest fraud I know! Your severity's just a pretence,"—bending forward to kiss her—"and a very thin one at that."
Then she greeted Nan precisely as though nothing had happened since they had last met, and, with a handshake all round, Mallory stepped into the car beside her and was whirled away to the station.
"It seems years since yesterday morning," said Nan, when, after Kitty's return from the station, they found themselves alone together.
For once Kitty had diverged from her usual principle, and a little jar of red stuff was responsible for the colour in her cheeks. Her eyes still blenched at the remembrance of that day and night's anxiety which she had endured alone.
"Yes," she acquiesced simply. "It seems years." And then, bit by bit, she drew from Nan the whole story of her flight from Mallow and of the violent scene which had preceded it, when Roger had so ruthlessly destroyed the portrait.
"I don't think—Peter—will ever forgive me," went on Nan, with a quiet hopelessness in her voice that was infinitely touching. "He would hardly speak to me."
The coolly aloof man from whom she had parted an hour ago did not seem as though he could ever have loved her. He had judged and condemned her as harshly as might a stranger. He was a stranger—this new, stonily indifferent Peter who had said very little but, in the few words he had spoken, had seemed to banish her out of his life and heart for ever.
"My dear"—Kitty's accustomed vitality rose to meet the occasion. "He'll forgive you some day, when he understands. Probably only a woman could really understand what made you do it. In any case, as far as Peter's concerned, it was all so ghastly for him, coming when it did—last night! He must have felt as if the world were falling to pieces."
"Last night? Why should it have been worse last night?"
"Because he'd just had a cable from India—about ten minutes before Sandy arrived—telling him that his wife had gone mad, and asking him to fetch her home."