“None, sir.”
And she said not a word. There was crushing bitterness in this. Mr. Bodkin’s arrival blotted out his departure. Would that he had never seen Knockshin or Mary! No, he could not think that, and, now that he was about to leave her, he felt what that severance would cost him.
The car was waiting with his impedimenta, and he sought her to say farewell. She was not in the conservatory or drawing-room, and as a last chance he tried the library. Entering noiselessly, he found Mary Joyce leaning her head upon her hands, her hands upon the mantel-piece and sobbing as if her heart would break.
“I beg your pardon!” he stammered. “Is—is—anything the—”
“A bad toothache,” she burst in passionately, without looking up.
What could he do? What could he say?
“I—I—do not know how to apologize for—for—intruding upon your anguish”—the words came very slowly, swelling, too, in his throat—“but I cannot, cannot leave without wishing you good-by and thanking you for the sunniest hours of my life.”
“You—you are g-going, then?” without looking round.
“I go to—to make room for Mr. Bodkin.”
She faced him. Her eyes were red and swollen, but down, down in their liquid depths he beheld—something that young men find once in a lifetime. He never remembered what he did, he never recollected what he said, but the truth came out as such truths will come out.