Her face was set and a little sullen as she came back
with a long silk scarf on her arm. Carron met her near the door. "Made
up your mind, have you?" he asked, with deliberate insolence. "Better
wait till to-morrow, my dear--he's half drunk."
She hated Carron. Hated him with an intensity that few women know. At
that moment she would have liked to kill him. But knowing a better
weapon, and rejoicing in her cruelty, she used it. "Poor old Gerald,"
she said, smiling at him, "no man over fifty can afford the luxury of
jealousy."
Then she joined Pontefract.
He made his proposal succinctly and well, and without any confusion she
accepted him. "No--you may not kiss me to-night," she added. "You may
come for that--to-morrow. Now would you mind going? I--I want to be
alone."
Quite humbly, hardly daring to believe in his good fortune, he left her,
and she wandered aimlessly over the grass towards the carp-pond. "Nasty,
slimy water," she said aloud, "you have lost me!"
Joyselle had stopped playing, and through the open windows only a very
subdued murmur of voices came. Even Bridge has its uses. The night was
perfect, and the serene moon sailed high under a scrap of cloud like a
wing.
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