In an instant she was leaning in at the doorway, imploring me to tell her the truth. But I evaded her questions.
The guard came and closed the door.
“Gerald!” she cried, bursting into tears, “tell me why you treat me thus when I love you so dearly! It is cruel! You cannot guess how deeply I have suffered these two hours! Will you not kiss me once before you go?” and she raised her white face to the window with an imploring expression.
“No,” I said, “I cannot, Edith.”
“You refuse to kiss me this once—for the last time?” she wailed.
“Yes,” I answered in a strained voice. “If you desire to know the reason of this refusal you will discover it when you reflect upon your actions of last night.”
“What!” she gasped, pale to the lips. “You saw him!”
“Yes,” I answered gravely, “I saw him.”
Then the train moved off, leaving her standing there pale and rigid; and without further glance at the blanched but beautiful face which only twelve hours ago I had believed to be the open countenance of the purest and sweetest woman on earth, I flung myself back into the corner, plunged in my own bitter reflections. I had told her the ghastly truth, and we had parted. Edith Austin, whom I had hoped to make my wife, was lost to me for ever.
At midday I wearily ascended the great marble staircase at the Foreign Office, those stairs which every diplomatist in London climbs, and in the corridor met Boyd, one of the Marquess’s private secretaries, who informed me that a meeting of the Cabinet was being held, and that his lordship had left instructions that I was to wait until he returned, when he would give me a despatch to carry at once to Paris.