"Were you coming to escort us?" asked Georgina, her words ready as usual.
"I am hastening to Lexington," he said. "I am going back to London by the first train that passes."
"What for?"
He made no reply. He turned to Mrs. Beauclerc, asking if he could do anything for her in town.
"Nothing, thank you," she answered, "unless you should see the dean. He was to be in London about this time, I believe. I can do nothing with her; she's placing herself beyond my control. Would you believe that she was out some hours today, never coming in until dark, and she will not tell me what was keeping her or who she was with!"
Frederick St. John hardly heard the complaint. He turned to Sarah, who had walked on, as if impatient at the encounter.
"Will you not say God speed to me? I may not be here again for a long, long time."
She did not put out her hand. She simply wished him good evening. Just this same freezing conduct had she observed to him in the one or two interviews that had taken place since his arrival. Who knows but it was the turning-point in their destiny? But for this repellent manner, made unnecessarily so, and which had told so disagreeably on him, he might in this contest with his brother have said: "Not Anne my wife; change her for another, and I will not say you nay." That it would have been listened to by Isaac St. John, there was little doubt.
"I never saw mamma in such a passion," whispered the giddy girl to him when the others went on. "I had kept dinner waiting, you see, and nothing exasperates her like that. Then she wanted to know where I had been: 'Out with the gipsies,' I answered. I couldn't tell the truth, you know. She was so mad!"
"And where had you been?"