XXIX

She was still thinking of the blinds when she saw that the man who came towards her was Rowcliffe.

He was wearing his rough tweed suit and his thick boots, and he had the look of the open air about him.

“Is that you, Miss Cartaret?  Good!”

He grasped her hand.  He behaved exactly as if he had expected her.  He never even wondered what she had come for.  She might have come to say that her father or one of her sisters was dying, and would he go at once; but none of these possibilities occurred to him.

He didn’t want to account for her coming to him.  It was natural and beautiful that she should come.

Then, as she stepped into the lighted passage, he saw that she was bareheaded and that her eyelashes were parted and gathered into little wet points.

He took her arm gently and led her into his study and shut the door.  They faced each other there.

“I say—­is anything wrong?”

“I thought you were ill.”

She hadn’t grasped the absurdity of it yet.  She was still under the spell of the illusion.

“I?  Ill?  Good heavens, no!”

“They told me in the village you’d got diphtheria.  And I came to know if it was true.  It isn’t true?”

He smiled; an odd little embarrassed smile; almost as if he were owning that it was or had been true.

“Is it?” she persisted as he went on smiling.

“Of course it isn’t.”

She frowned as if she were annoyed with him for not being ill.

“Then what was that other man here for?”

“Harker?  Oh, he just took my place for a day or two while I had a sore throat.”

“You had a throat then?”

Thus she accused him.

“And you did sit up for three nights with Ned Alderson’s baby?”

She defied him to deny it.

“That’s nothing.  Anybody would.  I had to.”

“And—­you saved the baby?”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “I don’t know.  Some thing or other pulled the little beggar through.”

“And you might have got it?”

“I might but I didn’t.”

“You did get a throat.  And it might have been diphtheria.”

Thus by accusing him she endeavored to justify herself.

“It might,” he said, “but it wasn’t.  I had to knock off work till I was sure.”

“And you’re sure now?”

“I can tell you you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

“And they told me you were dying.”

(She was utterly disgusted.)

At that he laughed aloud.  An irresistible, extravagantly delighted laugh.  When he stopped he choked and began all over again; the idea of his dying was so funny; so was her disgust.

“That,” she said, “was why I came.”

“Then I’m glad they told you.”

“I’m not,” said she.