Meanwhile, Marjorie had hurried out.  It was not true!  She was not so stupid and so silly that Hugh could never have fallen in love with her.  Why, he had fallen in love with her!  He had wanted her for his wife, and she—­she in her blindness and her folly, in her stupidity, which her aunt had but now been flinging in her teeth, had not realised that he was the one man in her world, the only man, and that she loved him as never, never could she love Tom Arundel or anyone else.

The little ancient disreputable car had been repaired by Rodding, the village handyman, who by some conjuring trick had made it run again.  Marjorie started it.

She had made up her mind.  She would go to Hurst Dormer, she would see Hugh and—­and quite what she would do she did not know.  Everything was on the knees of the gods, only she knew that she was very unhappy, a very miserable, unhappy, foolish girl, who had got what she had asked for, and found that she did not want it now she had it.

Piff, piff, paff, paff went the car, and Marjorie rolled off with a succession of jerks, leaving behind an odoriferous cloud of smoke and exhaust gases that lay like a blue mist along the drive, and presently made Lady Linden cough and speak in uncomplimentary terms of motoring and motorists generally.

On to Hurst Dormer Marjorie plugged, sad at heart, realising her folly.

“It is my fault,” she felt miserably; “it is all my fault, and I am not fair to Tom.  He doesn’t understand me.  I see him look at me sometimes, and I don’t wonder at it.  He doesn’t understand me a bit; he has every right to—­to think—­I love him, and I don’t—­I don’t.  I love Hugh!”

It was an hour later that Marjorie put in an appearance at Hurst Dormer.

Hugh was there, and Hugh was in.  It brought relief.  She wanted to cry with the relief she felt.

Over the tea-table, where she poured out the tea from the old silver Anne teapot, she looked at him, and saw many changes that one not loving him, as she knew she did now, might have missed.  The cheery frank smile was there yet, but it had lost much of its happiness.  His eyes were no less kind, but they had a tired look about them, a wistful look.  Oh, that she might cheat herself into believing that their wistfulness was for her!  But Marjorie was not the little fool her aunt called her.  She was a woman, and was gifted with a woman’s understanding.

“He does not love me now, not as he did.  I had my chance, and I said no, and now—­now it is gone for ever.”

And he, leaning back in his chair, watched her pouring out the tea as he had a few days ago watched another pouring out tea in a London hotel.  The sight of Joan performing that domestic duty had brought to him then a vision of this same old room, this very old teapot, that his mother had used.  And now, seeing Marjorie here, pouring out the tea, the only vision, the only remembrance that it brought to him was the memory of another girl pouring out tea in a London hotel.