Hubert closed his eyes, thinking of the lips that had clung to his, the eyes that had looked into his, the hands that had trembled beneath his, as they stood together in the chalky pit He got up suddenly: he had had about as much as he could stand.
At the moment a footman entered, with a note on a salver.
"From her," said Lance, very white, as the man left the room.
"Breaking it off," said Hubert, relighting his cold cigar with a shaking hand.
Lance read it
"Just so. She declines to give any kind of explanation of the statements made by Mr. Cooper. She prefers to consider the engagement at an end." He stood silent a moment, the note crumpled in his hand. "I'll go to her," he said unsteadily. "I've simply got to have it out with her! When she hears that I know—that you have told me"—he was half-way to the door. Then he stopped, as if choked. "When I think that I have never known all this! When I think that I have been shut out from her confidence, and that you—you—have known all the time! When I think that I've been away in Russia and you two, with this common memory between you, have been together! Day after day! Over that confounded house-building! I feel that I have good ground to consider myself hardly used."
Hubert turned slowly round. He was so white that Lance considered him attentively.
"Why have you told me now?" he cried. "Why?"
"Only because it couldn't be helped," returned Hubert, in a hard voice.
"And, but for this scoundrel turning up, she would have married me without a word! Brooke, I can't stand it! No man could! She's right, it had better be broken off."