Never once did she ask him where he had been, or what he had been doing, but listened as he told her of England, and then recounted the little trifles of her life, so pathetically filled with the sorrow at his absence though she did not speak of it.
They sat over their coffee while he smoked a cigar from his Club, which had never seemed so fragrant before.
At last he rose.
“It is getting chilly, darling,” he said in a voice he tried to steady. “Let’s go to bed.”
A deep blush dyed her neck and face, as she rose and took his hand.
Chapter V.
The Second Marriage
The summons had come, and Hugh braced himself to meet the call. Would to God he could have refused to go; to pretend that he was dead, anything to get out of it. But the perverted honour of the Curse drove him to play the last scene to the end.
“I shall only be away for a week, Darling,” he told her. “There is a certain property of mine I must look after.” That was true.
“When I come back this time, I shall not leave you again.”
She smiled at him; the wrench was not so bad this time, and she had other things to think of. When he came back she would tell him, and she hid her secret close, nursing the thought in her breast.