Her eyes were smarting with tears that had to be restrained.
“How dare he––oh, how dare he?” she asked herself passionately. “What does he know about Raymond?”
She could not trust herself to go back home. She walked about in the cold till she was tired out. She wanted to be sure that Micky would have left Elphinstone Road before she got there. She wondered if June knew the Ashtons too. She probably did, as Micky Mellowes knew them. They were both of Raymond’s own world, these two. It was only she, who loved him best, who was outside the magic circle of his friends.
It was nearly supper time when she got in. She paused for a moment in the hall and looked anxiously at the rows of coats and hats hanging there. She thought she would know Micky’s if she saw them there. She forgot that he might have taken them up to June’s room. She turned away with a little sigh.
At the foot of the stairs she met young Harley. He coloured sensitively when he saw her and stood aside for her to pass.
Esther flushed too. She wondered what he thought of 109 her note refusing the theatre. With sudden impulse she spoke––
“I hope you are not angry with me, Mr. Harley, but––but perhaps you do not know that I am engaged to be married, and so ... so I don’t think I should accept invitations from any one else, though––though it was kind of you to ask me,” she added.
“I should have been delighted if you could have come,” he said. “But, of course, if your fiancé would not care about it–––” He broke off as if there was nothing more to be said.
Esther wondered if Raymond really would mind; at first he had been very jealous, and could not bear her to speak to another man, but latterly––she hated it, because she could not forget that once he had told her she could marry a man with money if she only played her cards carefully––the man who had said that seemed a different personality altogether from the man whose letters she had only lived for during the last fortnight.
Was she mean and unforgiving that she continually found herself remembering the quarrels and scenes they had had? She wanted so earnestly to forget them; she went up to June’s room with dragging steps.