Nicky did not care to tarry.
“I should get back to my house with this devil’s cold I’ve caught,” he said. “Do you still have no sun in this bedamned England?”
The “you” struck Marie Louise as odd coming from a professed Englishman, even if he did lay the blame for his accent on years spent in German banking-houses.
“How did you find the United States?” Marie Louise asked, with a sudden qualm of homesickness.
“Those United States! Ha! United about what? Money!”
“I think you can get along better afoot,” said Marie Louise, as she made a turn and slipped through the pillars of the gate.
“Au revoir!” said Nicky, and he dived out, slamming the door back of him.
That night there was one of Sir Joseph’s dinners. But almost nobody came, except Lieutenant Hawdon and old Mr. Verrinder. Sir Joseph and Lady Webling seemed more frightened than insulted by the last-moment regrets of the guests. Was it an omen?
It was not many days before Sir Joseph asked Marie Louise to carry another envelope to Nicky. She went out alone, shuddering in the wet and edged air. She found the bench agreed on, and sat waiting, craven and mutinous. Nicky did not come, but another man passed her, looked searchingly, turned and came back to murmur under his lifted hat:
“Miss Webling?”