Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/232

 which had come to her in Mrs. Russell's flat when first she "knew"; this was the exhaustion, the complete draining of the feelings which then had filled her but since had been seeping away. Gazing out her father's window to the ell of the house where was her own room and down at the lawn about her home which she had loved as no other spot on earth, she realized that she was parting from it forever, and she not only failed to care but she was sure that, later, she would never care. She saw that her father did not yet suspect her plan of leaving his house and she was glad of that.

He was under sufficient excitement now, as he got to his feet, and with sudden alarm she cried, "Father, you must not stand!"

"I'm all right; keep still, Marjorie; stay where you are. You have done me certain services; you have put me in your debt in certain respects, so that you may feel I owe you some things. I do, but I do not include among them necessity to subscribe to your ideas of conduct nor to your judgments. If you prefer to stay at home, rather than accompany your mother, that is a matter of your own choice; I shall arrange for you here accordingly and for your mother to go with another companion."

And this he did succeed in arranging during the following days, for his wife never had definitely counted upon Marjorie accompanying her; she could agree therefore that it was probably as well for Marjorie to remain with her father for a while and come over later; Corinna Hale, herself, had long before laid out a program for this trip, as she did for all her activities, engaging one week for a visit with an English friend, another for certain long-planned studies in London, and so on. Accordingly, upon the day exactly a week later,