None the less the thought brought her to a mood of gentleness and she could not bear to let him go away thinking her still hurt and angry. As he helped her out of the car she smiled at him.
"I am sorry that I lost my temper and was rude," she said. Fanny had fled indoors and left them tactfully alone. "I don't know what you must think of me." Her eyes fell away from his, he saw the slow red creeping into her cheeks.
"Don't," he spoke quickly, he was for the moment feeling very vindictive against Mabel. "When you apologize you make it ten times worse. It was not your fault the least little bit in the world."
"But it was," she answered; she looked up at him. "If you must have the honest truth, I was jealous from the moment I got out there. And jealousy hurts sometimes, you know, especially when it is mixed up with memories of something you once had and have lost for ever."
"That is nonsense," Dick said. It was in his heart to propose there and then, but he held it back. "I meant you to enjoy yourself, I hoped you would like Mabel, and you did not—thanks to her own amiability. Am I forgiven?"
"We forgive each other," she answered; she put her hand into his, "and good-night, if not good-bye. To-morrow is our last performance, you know, we leave the next day."
"And even with that it is not good-bye," he told her. "I shall be at the theatre to-morrow night."
Mrs. Grant and Dick had one very stormy and decided interview. That is to say, Mrs. Grant stormed and wept, Dick merely stated quite quietly and very definitely that he intended to follow Joan to London and that he was going to do his best to make her marry him.
"You do not mind how much you break my heart," Mrs. Grant sobbed, "your mother is of no consequence to you. My years of love and devotion to you when you were a baby count for nothing. You throw them all aside for this impossible, outrageous girl."
"Nothing is to be gained by calling her names," Dick answered, "and there is no reason why your heart should break, Mother. When you see her again——"