Again he almost jumped from his chair.  “Going, too?  Going where?”

“Going to Stoughton with papa.”

“But—­but—­Miss Guion—­”

“I’m not going to be married,” she continued, in the same even tone.  “I thought perhaps Colonel Ashley might have told you.  That’s all over.”

“All over—­how?”

“He’s been so magnificent—­so wonderful.  He stood by me during all my trouble, never letting me know that he’d changed in any way—­”

“Oh, he’s changed, has he?”

Because he sat slightly behind her, she missed the thunderous gloom in his face, while she was too intent on what she was saying to note the significance in his tone.

“Perhaps he hasn’t changed so much, after all.  As I think it over I’m inclined to believe that he was in love with Drusilla from the first-only my coming to Southsea brought in a disturbing—­”

“Then he’s a hound!  I’d begun to think better of him—­I did think better of him—­but now, by God, I’ll—­”

With a backward gesture of the hand, without looking at him, she made him resume the seat from which he was again about to spring.

“No, no.  You don’t understand.  He’s been superb.  He’s still superb.  He would never have told me at all if he hadn’t seen—­”

She stopped with a little gasp.

“Yes?  If he hadn’t seen—­what?”

“That I—­that I—­I care—­for some one else.”

“Oh!  Well, of course, that does make a difference.”

He fell back into the depths of his chair, his fingers drumming on the table beside which he sat.  Minutes passed before he spoke again.  He got the words out jerkily, huskily, with dry throat.

“Some one—­in England?”

“No—­here.”

During the next few minutes of silence he pulled himself imperceptibly forward, till his elbows rested on his knees, while he peered up into the face of which he could still see nothing but the profile.

“Is he—­is he—­coming to Stoughton?”

“He’s going to Stoughton.  He’s been there—­already.”

If there was silence again it was because he dared not frame the words that were on his tongue.

“It isn’t—­it can’t be—?”

Without moving otherwise, she turned her head so that her eyes looked into his obliquely.  She nodded.  She could utter no more than the briefest syllables.  “Yes.  It is.”

His lips were parched, but he still forced himself to speak.  “Is that true?—­or are you saying it because—­because I put up the money?”

She gathered all her strength together.  “If you hadn’t put up the money, I might never have known that it was true; but it is true.  I think it was true before that—­long ago—­when you offered me so much—­so much!—­that I didn’t know how to take it—­and I didn’t answer you.  I can’t tell.  I can’t tell when it began—­but it seems to me very far back—­”

Still bending forward, he covered his eyes with his left hand, raising his right in a blind, groping movement in her direction.  She took it in both her own, clasping it to her breast, as she went on: