"What a brute—what a cad you must think me."
"I don't, Jerry. It's not your fault. Things have just happened. And you see, I understand. I felt the same about Auntie Adeline after Mother died. I didn't want to see her because she reminded me—and yet, really, I loved her all the time."
"You won't go back on me for it?"
"I wouldn't go back on you whatever you did. And you mustn't keep on thinking I want to go to India. I don't care a rap about India itself. I hate Anglo-Indians and I simply loathe hot places. And Daddy doesn't want me out there, really. I shall be much happier on my farm. And it'll save a lot of expense, too. Just think what my outfit and passage would have cost."
"You wouldn't have cared what it cost if—"
"There isn't any if. I'm not lying, really." Not lying. Not lying. She would have given up more than India to save Jerrold that pang of memory. Only, when it was all over and he had sailed without her, she realized in one wounding flash that what she had given up was Jerrold himself.
V
ELIOT AND ANNE
i
Anne did not go back to her Ilford farm at once. Adeline had made that impossible.