"I've no right to tell you, I suppose," she said, lowering her voice, "but it won't be easy. I never thought she'd change so, but now--well----" She shrugged her shoulders.

A little flame flashed into Jimmy's eyes.

"You mean that she doesn't care a hang for me now, is that it?" he asked roughly.

Gladys did not answer, she turned her face away.

Jimmy put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him.

"Gladys, you don't mean--not--not Kettering?"

There was a thrill of agony in his voice.

"I don't know--I can't be sure," Gladys answered him agitatedly. "I don't know anything. It's only--only what I'm afraid of." She moved hurriedly away from him as they heard Christine's footsteps on the landing upstairs.

"I suppose it was wrong of me to have said that," she told herself in a panic as she went in to dinner. "But after all, it serves him right!

Perhaps he'll understand now something of what she suffered, poor darling."

Out in the hall Jimmy was standing at the foot of the stairs looking up at Christine.

"I--I feel such an awful brute," he began agitatedly. "I don't deserve that you should consider me in the least. I--I'll do my best, Christine."

She seemed to avoid looking at him. She moved quickly past him.

"Don't let's talk about it," she said nervously. "I'd much rather we did not talk about it." She went on into the dining-room without him.

Jimmy stood for a moment irresolute, he could not believe that it was Christine who had spoken to him like this. Christine, who so obviously wished to avoid being with him.

A sudden flame of jealousy seared his heart, he clenched his fists.

Kettering--d.a.m.n the fellow, how dared he make love to another man's wife!

But he had conquered his agitation before he followed Christine. He did his best to be cheerful and amusing during dinner. He was rewarded once by seeing the pale ghost of a smile on Christine's sad little face; it was as if for a moment she allowed him to raise the veil of disillusionment that had fallen between them and step back into the old happy days when they had played at sweethearts.

But the dinner was over all too soon, and Gladys said it was time to think about trains, and she talked and hustled very cleverly, giving them no time to feel awkward or embarra.s.sed. She was going to escort them to the station, she declared, conscious, perhaps, that both of them would be glad of her company; she said that she wished, she could come with them all the way, but that, of course, they did not want her.

And neither of them dared to contradict her, though secretly Jimmy and Christine would both have given a great deal had she suddenly changed her mind and insisted on accompanying them to London.

She stood at the door of the railway carriage until the last minute; she sent all manner of absurd messages, to the Great Horatio; she told Christine to be sure, to give him her love; she kept up a running fire of chaff and banter till the train started away, and a pompous guard told her to "Stand back, there!" and presently the last glimpse of Christine's pale little face and Jimmy's worried eyes had been swallowed up in the darkness of evening.

Then Gladys turned to walk home alone with a feeling of utter desolation in her heart and an undignified smarting of tears in her eyes.

"I hope to goodness I've done the right thing in letting her go," she thought, as she turned out on to the dark road again. "I hope--I beg your pardon," she had b.u.mped into a tall man coming towards her.

He stopped at sound of her voice, it was Kettering.

"Miss Leighton, what in the world----" he began in amazement.

"I've been seeing Jimmy off," Gladys explained airily, though her heart was beating uncomfortably. "Jimmy and Christine; they've gone off on a second honeymoon," she added flippantly.

"Jimmy--and Christine!" he echoed her words in just the tone of voice she had dreaded and expected to hear, half hurt, half angry. She could feel his eyes peering down at her, trying to read her face through the darkness, then he gave a short, angry laugh.

"I suppose you think you are protecting her from me," he said roughly.

Gladys did not answer at once, and when she spoke it was in a queer, strangled voice:

"Or perhaps I am protecting you--from her!"

There was a little silence, then she moved a step from him. "Good night," she said.

He followed. "I will walk back with you." He strode along beside her through the darkness; he was thinking of Christine and Jimmy, speeding away to London together, and a sort of impotent rage consumed him.

Jimmy was such a boy! So ignorant of the way in which to love a woman like Christine; he asked an angry question:

"Whose suggestion was this--this----?" He could not go on.

"I don't know--they agreed between themselves, I think. Horatio is coming home--the Great Horatio, you knew," Gladys told him, her voice sounded a little hysterical.

"And are you staying on here?"

"I shall for the present--till Christine comes back--if she ever does,"

she added deliberately.

"You mean that you think she won't?" he questioned sharply.

"I mean that I _hope_ she won't."

They walked some little way in silence.

"You'll find it dull--alone at Upton House," he said presently in a more friendly voice.

"Yes." Gladys was humiliated to know how near she was to weeping; she would rather have died than let Kettering know how desolate she felt.

"You don't care for motoring, do you?" he said suddenly. "Or I might come along and take you out sometimes."

"I do, I love it."

She could feel him staring at her in amazement.

"But you said----" he began.

"I know what I said; it was only another way of expressing my disapproval of--of---- Well, you know!" she explained.

"Oh," he said grimly; suddenly he laughed. "Well, then, may I call and take you out sometimes? We shall both be--lonely," he added with a sigh. "And even if you don't like me----"

He waited, as if expecting her to contradict him, but she did not, and it was impossible for him to know that through the darkness her heart was racing, and her cheeks crimson because--well, perhaps because she liked him too much for complete happiness.

CHAPTER XXII