"I am so sorry," she said, with the simple humility of a little child. "Please forgive me, Sir Everard. I know it was horrid of me to laugh; but you don't really care for me, you know. You only think you do; and I—oh! I'm only a flighty little girl of seventeen, and I don't love anybody in the world but papa, and I never mean to be married—at least, not for ages to come. Do forgive me."
He bowed low, but he would neither answer nor take her hand. He was far too deeply hurt.
Before she could speak again he was gone.
"And he's as mad as a hatter!" said Harrie, ruefully. "Oh, dear, dear! what torments men are, and what a bore falling in love is! And I liked him, too, better than any of them, and thought we were going to be brothers in arms—Damon and—what's his name?—and all that sort of thing! It's of no use my ever hoping for a friend. I shall never have one in this lower world, for just so sure as I get to like a person, that person must go and fall in love with me, and then we quarrel and part. It's hard."
Miss Hunsden sighed deeply, and went into the house. And Sir Everard rode home as if the fiend was after him—like a man gone mad—flung the reins of the foaming horse to the astounded groom, rushed up to his room and locked himself in, and declined his luncheon and his dinner.
When he came down to breakfast next morning, with a white, wild face, and livid rings round his eyes, he electrified the family by his abrupt announcement:
"I start for Constantinople to-morrow. From thence I shall make a tour of the East. I will not return to England for the next three years."
CHAPTER XIII.
LYING IN BRITHLOW WOOD.
A thunderbolt falling at your feet from a cloudless summer sky must be rather astounding in its unexpectedness, but no thunderbolt ever created half the consternation Sir Everard's fierce announcement did.