“I think—I won’t wait,” she managed to say and went out, closing the door.
At the other side she stopped, hands pressed tight to her lips, and waited for courage to go forward.
Partway down the stairs she saw Jarvis looking up. Fright grayed his face.
[323]
] “I’ll see Lord Chesterfield now,” she told him and followed to the run.
With gaze straining through the train window an hour later at meadow and woodland she did not see, she was carried back to Restawhile, to the babies waiting for her.
The moon rose, as she had pictured it, paling the trees outside her room and the lawn beneath.
At last her door opened. Cunningham entered, closing it softly, switched on the lights and saw her sitting hunched in a chair, with eyes bewildered as if they could not realize the thing they had revealed. He spoke her name—once, twice. She did not even glance at him.
“Nancy, answer me!”
She turned slowly.
“I ask you not to jump at conclusions. Nancy—”