"My love! my life!" he cried, "every hour has been an age since I said good-by!"
She drew herself from him. Sir Victor, in the calm, courteous character of a perfectly undemonstrative suitor she tolerated. Sir Victor in the role of Romeo was excessively distasteful to her. She drew herself out of his arms coldly and decisively.
"I am glad to see you back, Sir Victor." But the stereotyped words of welcome fell chill on his ear. "You are not looking well. I am afraid you have been very much harassed since you left."
Surely he was not looking well. In those six days he had grown more than six years older. He had lost flesh and color; there was an indescribable something in his face and expression she had never seen before. More had happened than the death of the father he had never known, to alter him like this. She looked at him curiously. Would he tell her?
He did not. Not looking at her, with his eyes fixed moodily on the wood-fire smoldering on the hearth, he repeated what his letter had already said. His father had died the morning of their arrival in London; they had buried him quietly and unobtrusively, by his own request, in Kensal Green Cemetery; no one was to be told, and the wedding was not to be postponed. All this he said as a man repeats a lesson learned by rote—his eyes never once meeting hers.
She stood silently by, looking at him, listening to him.
Something lay behind, then, that she was not to know. Well, it made them quits—she didn't care for the Catheron family secrets; if it were something unpleasant, as well not know. If Sir Victor told her, very well; if not, very well also. She cared little either way.
"Miss Catheron remains at St John's Wood, I suppose?" she inquired indifferently, feeling in the pause that ensued she must say something.
"She remains—yes—with her two old servants for the present. I believe her ultimate intention is to go abroad."
"She will not return to Cheshire?"