"Pleased? You know I am. It is much too good of you to give me such a splendid present; and father is simply delighted. But why are you going away? I thought you would stay to tea."
He still held her hand, in defiance of a gentle attempt to withdraw it, and now he pressed it closer.
"Unhappily I must go," he said, without looking at her. "Your mother will tell you why, better than I can do. Good-bye—-petite amis. Think well of me, if you can."
He bent over her hand, kissed it lingeringly, and was gone before she could find words to express her bewilderment.
CHAPTER XVI.
"What we love we'll serve, aye, and suffer for too."
—W. Penn.
After sunset the mist came down again, thick as cotton-wool. Heaven and earth were obliterated, and a quietly determined downpour set in for the night.
Quita was still at her easel, trying bravely to disregard the collapse of her happy omen; Michael lounging in a cane chair, with Shelley and a cigarette. He had returned from Jundraghat in a mood of skin-deep nonchalance, beneath which irritation smouldered, and Quita's news had set the sparks flying. Behold him, therefore, doubly a martyr; ready, as always, to make capital out of his crown of thorns. A renewed pattering on the verandah slates roused him from the raptures of the Epipsychidion.
"Well, at least you can't think of going now," he said, flinging the book aside with a gesture of impatience. "That's one blessing, if the rest's a blank."
Quita, who was washing out her brushes, looked round quickly.