Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/88

 had time to travel to its logical conclusion. She went back to the moment when the footman had opened the door, and she had asked for Lady Hereward. "Her ladyship went out to lunch with Sir Ian," the servant had said. Then just as she had refused to wait, and was starting away, Ian had come. At first glance she had found him little changed; but by and by, when a slight flush had died away from his face, the illusion of youth faded with it. She had thought he looked worn, and haggard, not as happy as so fortunate a man ought to be.

There was no real reason, she told herself, why the sight of her should have made him sad. As she had said to him, "it was all so long ago." If he had felt no remorse then, why should he suddenly feel it now? He had fallen so desperately in love with Milly that he had thrown all other considerations but that love under his feet and trampled on them. Yet—and yet—what anguish had been in his eyes and tone to-day! His groan when he had broken out with, "Oh, God, Terry!" sounded in her ears still. Never since had she ceased to hear it echoing, alone in her own room, at dinner afterward with Maud, and—more despairing yet through the telling of the butler's story. Could it be possible that Ian's marriage had not proved a success, after all he had sacrificed to make it? Miss Ricardo could scarcely believe that it had been a failure, for as a young girl she had worshipped