So Louie became a quite superior writer of Pitman's shorthand. The weeks passed. Jim still remained away.
Nor had she any news of Kitty Windus, of Miriam Levey, nor yet of Evie Jeffries. She still, however, remained good friends with Billy Izzard. It was from Billy that she heard, one night in April, something that filled her with a vague and ineffectual trouble.
She had gone up to his place in Camden Town, intending to spend an hour or so with him; but five minutes was all the time Billy had to spare for her. He was just off to Victoria to meet a fellow, he said; if she was going that way they could go together; and she needn't think he was going to leave her in the studio to steal his sketches. "One of our heroes just come back from South Africa, a fellow called Lovenant-Smith," he said. "Coming?"
"I'll go with you as far as Charing Cross," said Louie.
Before she left Billy at Charing Cross she had learned quite a lot about his friend, Mr. Lovenant-Smith. There was nothing especially heroic about Roy's homecoming; no doubt his work had been useful, but it had not been fighting; for a year and a half he had not left Cape Town. He had now come into money, and was handing in his papers; he would hunt and manage his estate somewhere down in Shropshire. "I shall go and stop with him," said Billy. "I only hope his horses are better than that old yacht he nearly drowned the pair of us in." And at Charing Cross he left Louie.
Roy was back home, then.
Well, it made not one atom of difference. Jim away was all to her, Roy in England nothing. No doubt it was wicked.
So much the worse for Louie.
Then, not a week later, Jim returned from Egypt.
But he returned only to go away once more, this time to Scotland. She saw him, for just one moment, coming out of Sir Julius's room. He was very brown, but much thinner, and he had a new overcoat. He went straight on to Scotland that day. Mr. Stonor said that he intended to stay there for the rest of the summer. "Overwork, of course," said Mr. Stonor.