The meal was a silent one. Evelyn found the pattern of her plate curiously engrossing. Desmond, after a few hurried mouthfuls, excused himself and went out. Then Evelyn looked up; and the tears that hung on her lashes overflowed.
"He—he's gone to the stables, Honor," she said brokenly. "He got an answer this morning;—I'm sure he did. But he—he won't tell me anything now. Where's the use of being married to him if he's always going on like this? I wish—I wish he could sell—me to that man, instead of Diamond. He wouldn't mind it half as much——"
And with this tragic announcement—which, for at least five minutes, she implicitly believed—her head went down upon her hands.
Honor soothed her very tenderly, realising that she sorrowed with the despair of a child who sees the world's end in every broken toy.
"Hush—hush!" she remonstrated. "You mustn't think anything so foolish, so unjust. Theo is very magnanimous, Evelyn. He will see you are sorry, and then it will all go smoothly again."
"But there's the—the other thing," murmured the pretty sinner with a doleful shake of her head. "He won't forgive me that; and he doesn't seem to see that I'm sorry. I wanted to tell him this morning, when I saw that letter. But he somehow makes me afraid to say a word about it."
"Better not try yet awhile, dear. When a man is in trouble, there is nothing he thanks one for so heartily as for letting him alone till it is well over."
Evelyn looked up again with a misty smile.
"I can't think why you know so much about men, Honor. How do you find out those sort of things?"