"Is your car coming back for you?" he asked with a detachment that she admired.
"Yes. You can take it on, if you like. Or perhaps you'd rather not come with me.... I suppose you won't be coming to the Abbey to-morrow?"
"I intended to."
"Jack, it can't do any good!"
"Do you withdraw the invitation?"
"I'd rather you didn't come. Later on we may be able to meet.... You won't believe me now, but time is a wonderful healer——"
He interrupted her with a laugh of grating boisterousness.
"Is there anything to heal?"
It was after four o'clock when Barbara returned home alone from Ross House; but, though she went quietly to bed, Lady Crawleigh interrupted her undressing. The Duchess of Ross was the latest busybody to wonder audibly whether young Waring was serious, and it was high time for the girl to know that people were talking about her.
"There was such a mob that, when Jack and I had got away from it, we didn't go back," sighed Barbara wearily, to explain her lateness. "I wish Eleanor Ross didn't know quite so many people. Oh, mother, Jack can't come to the Abbey this week-end. He's writing to you, but he asked me to give you that message."