‘O never!’
However, before he rose she grew friendly to some degree, and when he left, just after the arrival of three opportune young ladies she seemed regretful. She asked him to come again; and he thought he would tell the truth. ‘No: I shall not care to come again,’ he answered, in a tone inaudible to the young ladies.
She followed him to the door. ‘What an uncivil thing to say!’ she murmured in surprise.
‘It is rather uncivil. Good-bye,’ said Pierston.
As a punishment she did not ring the bell, but left him to find his way out as he could. ‘Now what the devil this means I cannot tell,’ he said to himself, reflecting stock-still for a moment on the stairs. And yet the meaning was staring him in the face.
Meanwhile one of the three young ladies had said, ‘What interesting man was that, with his lovely head of hair? I saw him at Lady Channelcliffe’s the other night.’
‘Jocelyn Pierston.’
‘O, Nichola, that IS too bad! To let him go in that shabby way, when I would have given anything to know him! I have wanted to know him ever since I found out how much his experiences had dictated his statuary, and I discovered them by seeing in a Jersey paper of the marriage of a person supposed to be his wife, who ran off with him many years ago, don’t you know, and then wouldn’t marry him, in obedience to some novel social principles she had invented for herself.’
‘O! didn’t he marry her?’ said Mrs. Pine-Avon, with a start. ‘Why, I heard only yesterday that he did, though they have lived apart ever since.’
‘Quite a mistake,’ said the young lady. ‘How I wish I could run after him!’