"But it ought to have come to-day. Charley has never missed his proper day before."
"Perhaps he was too busy to write."
"Too busy! As if he would let anything keep him from writing to me!"
"I didn't mean that he would not wish to write, but that he might not be able," explained Honour with care.
"Of course. You needn't apologize for Charley to me, thank you. If he doesn't write it's because he can't, and any one else would understand how I feel about it—especially when it is getting so near the time for him to come back." Marian's nerves were evidently on edge, as she moved restlessly about the room, and shot out her sentences at her sister like darts. "I wish you wouldn't sit there so quietly. You don't sympathize a bit. If Charley doesn't come up here next month as he promised, I don't know what I shall do. At any rate, if anything happens it will be his fault."
"Oh, Marian, how can you be so unfair?" cried Honour, with her usual earnestness. "You know poor Charles will come if he possibly can. And how dreadful to say it would be his fault if anything went wrong!"
"I didn't say 'if anything went wrong'; I said 'if anything happened,'" corrected Marian pettishly. "And I don't know why you should say 'poor Charles.' He would be perfectly happy if he was here with me, and so should I. He understands things—oh, I do want him so!"
"Oh, don't cry," entreated Honour in alarm. "Dear Marian, you will only do yourself harm, you know, and you were so anxious he should find you well and cheerful. Just finish your letter to him, and then let us sit out on the verandah a little before going to bed. The Antonys' guests will be leaving, and you know how pretty the torches look among the hills."
"How can I finish my letter when I don't know whether there is anything in his to answer?" complained Marian. "Well, I will leave it unsealed, and put in an extra sheet if necessary. I'll come out in a minute. I'm sorry I am so cross, Honour. After all it isn't your fault that you are not Charley."
"Of course not," said Honour indignantly, and there was more than a suggestion of what was known, in those days of distended skirts, as "flouncing" in the quick rustle with which she left the room. Somehow Marian and she seemed perpetually to rub one another the wrong way, and every one thought it was her fault, because Marian was always so bright and pleasant in public. Marian received plenty of sympathy and wanted more, but Honour felt that a little would be very pleasant to herself. Yet why should her thoughts in this connection be suddenly discovered to have flown to Gerrard? "He understands," she said to herself, and blushed hotly in the darkness to remember that these were the very words Marian had used of her husband. Giving herself a little shake, as though to get rid of the momentary foolishness, she bent her thoughts sternly to the subject of Sir Edmund and Lady Antony's dinner-party. Ladies in the hills whose husbands were on service did not accept invitations in those benighted days, and Honour had naturally remained with her sister. Their bungalow stood a little higher than the Resident's Lodge, and the effect of the torches by which all the guests were lighted along the hill-paths was very pretty from their verandah.