Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/195

Rh which he went on: "I've come back sooner than I promised, but only to be strictly fair. I began to see that we couldn't hold out, and that it was my duty to let you off. From that moment I was bound to put an end to your situation. I might have done so by letter, but that seemed scarcely decent. It's all I came back for, you know, and it's why I wired to you yesterday."

Mary hesitated an instant; she reflected intensely. What had happened, what would happen, was that if she didn't take care the signal for the end of their little arrangement would not have appeared to come from herself. She particularly wished it not to come from any one else, she had even a horror of that; so that after an instant she hastened to say, "I was on the very point of wiring to you—I was only waiting for your address."

"Wiring to me?" He seemed rather blank.

"To tell you that our absurd affair really, this time, can't go on another day—to put a complete stop to it."

"Oh!" said Guy Firminger.