For a quarter of an hour the party, which now included Preston and Major Guysburg, remained in the vestibule talking over the exciting evening. Now and again guests returning from the Casino would come up, apologize for speaking, and then offer their congratulations. The only two who remained calm, and apparently unaffected by what had happened, were Preston and the major.
When Preston kissed Yootha good night in the corridor before they parted for the night, he looked down at her sadly.
“My darling,” he said, “have you forgotten what happened that night at Henley? The day is approaching when it will be necessary for us to do one thing or the other regarding Cora, and of course there is only one thing we can do.”
“How do you mean—‘only one thing’?”
Preston gazed at her, speechless.
“Jessica,” Yootha went on, “was talking to me about Cora this evening, and hinted to me things about her which, if they are true, would tempt me never to speak to her again. I am inclined to think we have overrated Cora, and that her alleged friendship is not wholly disinterested.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
A FRIEND INDEED!
While the events described in the preceding chapter were taking place in Dieppe, Cora Hartsilver was visiting friends who had a place in Jersey, near Gorey. They were people she had known intimately before her marriage, friends of Sir Stephen Lethbridge whom she had loved so terribly even after her marriage, but she had not seen them since her husband’s death, though several times they had asked her to stay with them.
She was glad to be out of London at last. The place had begun to pall on her soon after the Armistice, also her friend, Yootha Hagerston, seemed gradually to have changed in her manner towards her in a way she could not exactly describe, but which she felt. She did not blame Yootha for this change, though secretly she resented it. She attributed it to her friend’s engagement, and hoped that after her marriage Yootha would become her old self again, for she could not believe that her long affection for her could have cooled.