‘No, Miss Power,’ said Somerset gravely. ‘But with a deeper sense of woman’s thoughtless trifling than time will ever eradicate.’
‘Is not that a mistake?’ she asked in a voice that distinctly trembled.
‘A mistake? How?’
‘I mean, do you not forget many things?’ (throwing on him a troubled glance). ‘A woman may feel herself justified in her conduct, although it admits of no explanation.’
‘I don’t contest the point for a moment.... Goodbye.’
‘Good-bye.’
They parted amid the flowering shrubs and caged birds in the hall, and he saw her no more. De Stancy came up, and spoke a few commonplace words, his sister having gone out, either without perceiving Somerset, or with intention to avoid him.
That night, as he had said, he was on his way to England.
VII.
The De Stancys and Powers remained in Heidelberg for some days. All remarked that after Somerset’s departure Paula was frequently irritable, though at other times as serene as ever. Yet even when in a blithe and saucy mood there was at bottom a tinge of melancholy. Something did not lie easy in her undemonstrative heart, and all her friends excused the inequalities of a humour whose source, though not positively known, could be fairly well guessed.