For a while, after they had turned and begun pacing together under the now yellowing plane trees, neither of them spoke. Then Oliver said abruptly, "So all our schemes have vanished into air—I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too," she said. "I always knew that Godfrey would never allow me to go away with Gillie, but I never, never thought that even he could behave as he did to my brother the other day——"
There was a sound of suppressed passion and revolt in her voice that he had never heard there before. It touched a chord in his own heart, but all he said, slowly, was, "I suppose Gillie irritated him."
"No, I don't think so. There wasn't time for Gillie to do anything, for Godfrey at once refused to shake hands with him. That's how it began."
"Gillie ought to have written first. My mother begged him not to take Godfrey by surprise——"
"Your mother is always right," she said in a low voice. "I've never known her wrong yet, though her advice isn't always easy to follow, Oliver."
"I'm afraid she was right this time, anyhow."
"I know she was."
There fell between them a long, pregnant silence. And then Oliver said, in a low, moved voice, "I'm afraid that this last business has made you very unhappy, Laura?"
She answered, "Yes—foolishly so. I ought not to have been surprised, for by this time I know Godfrey so well." And she believed herself to be speaking the truth.