Stargarde smiled languidly. “I referred to that and she said she would not care if you were a hundred.”
“That sounds like her,” he said with satisfaction. “I will go now lest I should meet her.”
“Yes, do so,” said Stargarde with sweet inhospitality; “and try to keep away from here for a time.”
“I will,” he said, and after a little further conversation he left her and went back to what he speedily found to be a very lonely house. There was no more cheerful girlish chatter about the halls and in the rooms of his dwelling, for as the days went by, Judy with her usual shrewdness discovered the situation of affairs, and calmly absented herself from home and presented herself at the Pavilion at all manner of unseasonable hours.
“If you have a pretty flower,” she said coolly, “and some one else picks it, you can at least go and sit down beside it and enjoy its perfume, though why this particular hothouse bloom should choose to transplant itself among weeds and stubble is more than I can imagine—making petticoats and aprons for old women too. Stuff and nonsense! She’ll soon get over it.”
Weeks passed away and Armour in a kind of dull resignation continued his solitary life. Judy was rarely at home and Mrs. Colonibel had grown strangely quiet and haggard. She was also losing her flesh. Armour did not know what was the matter with her, though he knew quite well what ailed his brother, who at home was always dull now, never merry, and who so often returned from the town with a bright red spot in each cheek.
At such times Armour eyed him keenly and suspiciously, for he knew that the red spots betokened a visit to the Pavilion.
“Valentine has developed quite a fondness for Stargarde’s society,” said Judy one day in a vexed way. “I wish that he would stay at home. No one is happy when he is about, for he teases unmercifully, from the dog up to the human beings.”
Camperdown disapproved hugely of the situation of affairs. “It is always the unexpected that occurs,” he said one day to Stargarde; “but I didn’t expect such a block as this. I’m going to interfere. That girl is worrying you to death.”
“No, she is not,” said Stargarde; “she really is not, Brian.”