Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/264

256 “Yes,” said Lettie. “It is best. But I thought that you——” she smiled at him in sad reproach.

“Did you think so?” he replied, smiling gravely.

“Yes,” she whispered. They stood looking at one another.

He made an impulsive movement towards her. She, however, drew back slightly, checking him.

“Well—I shall see you again sometime—so good-bye,” he said, putting out his hand.

We heard a foot crunching on the gravel. Leslie halted at the top of the riding. Lettie, hearing him, relaxed into a kind of feline graciousness, and said to George:

“I am so sorry you are going to leave—it breaks the old life up. You said I would see you again——” She left her hand in his a moment or two.

“Yes,” George replied. “Good-night”—and he turned away. She stood for a moment in the same drooping, graceful attitude watching him, then she turned round slowly. She seemed hardly to notice Leslie.

“Who was that you were talking to?” he asked.

“He has gone now,” she replied irrelevantly, as if even then she seemed hardly to realise it.

“It appears to upset you—his going—who is it?”

“He!—Oh,—why, it’s George Saxton.”

“Oh, him!”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“Eh? What did he want? Oh, nothing.”

“A mere trysting—in the interim, eh!”—he said