The Imaginary Marriage | Page 9

say it; he had to say something, and it seemed to him that her anger against him was almost unreasonable.
She made no answer; the door closed on her, and he was left to try and collect his thoughts.
And he had not even apologised, he reflected now. She had not given him an opportunity to.
Pacing the room, Hugh decided what he would do. He would give her time to cool down, for her wrath to evaporate, then he would seek her out, and tell her as much as he could--tell her that the secret was not entirely his own. He would appeal to the generosity that he had told her she did not possess.
"Hugh!"
"Eh?" He started.
"What does this mean? You don't mean to tell me, Hugh, that all my efforts have gone for nothing?"
Lady Linden had sailed into the room; she was angry, she quivered with rage.
"I take an immense amount of trouble to bring two foolish young people together again, and--and this is the result!"
"What's the result?"
"She has gone!"
"Oh!"
"Did you know she had gone?"
"No, I knew nothing at all about her."
"Well, she has. She left the house twenty minutes ago. I've sent Chepstow after her in the car; he is to ask her to return."
"I don't suppose she will," Hugh said, remembering the very firm look about Miss Joan Meredyth's mouth.
"And I planned the reconciliation, I made sure that once you came face to face it would be all right. Hugh, there is more behind all this than meets the eye!"
"That's it," he said, "a great deal more! No third person can interfere with any hope of success."
"And you," she said, "can let a girl like that, your own wife, go out of your life and make no effort to detain her!"
He nodded.
"For two pins," said Lady Linden, "I would box your ears, Hugh Alston."
CHAPTER V
"PERHAPS I SHALL GO BACK"
Perhaps she was over-sensitive and a little unreasonable, but she would not admit it. She had been insulted by a man who had used her name lightly, who had proclaimed that he was her husband, a man who was a complete stranger to her. She had heard of him before from Marjorie Linden, when they were at school together.
Marjorie had spoken of this man in effusive admiration. Joan's lips curled with scorn. She did not question her own anger. She did not ask herself, was it reasonable? Had not the man some right to defend himself, to explain? If he had wanted to explain, he had had ample opportunity, and he had not taken advantage of it. No, it was a joke--a cruel, cowardly joke at her expense.
Poor and alone in the world, with none to defend her, she had been subjected to the odious attentions of Slotman. She was ready to regard all men as creatures of the same type. She had allowed poverty to narrow her views and warp her mind, and now--
"I beg your pardon, ma'am--"
She was walking along the road to the station. She turned, a man had pulled up in a small car; he touched his hat.
"My lady sent me after you, Mrs. Alston."
Joan gripped her hands tightly. She looked with blazing eyes at the man--"Mrs. Alston..." Even the servant!
"My lady begs that you will return with me. She would be very much hurt, ma'am, if you left the house like this, her ladyship begs me to say."
"Who was your message for?"
"For you, ma'am, of course," said the man.
"Ma'am--Mrs. Alston!" So this joke had been passed on even to the servants, and now she was asked to return.
"Go back and tell Lady Linden that I do not understand her message in the least. Kindly say that the person you overtook on the road was Miss Joan Meredyth, who is taking the next train to London." She bent her head, turned her back on him, and made her way on to the station.
Half an hour later she was leaning back wearily on the dusty seat of a third-class railway carriage, on her way back to the London she hated. Now she was going back again, because she had nowhere else to go. As she sat there with closed eyes, and the tears on her cheeks, she counted up her resources. They were so small, so slender, yet she had been so careful. And now this useless journey had eaten deeply into the little store.
She had no more than enough to keep her for another week, one more week, and then.... She shivered at the thought of the destitution that was before her.
Dinner at the boarding-house was over when she returned, but its unsavoury and peculiar smell still pervaded the place.
"Why, Miss Meredyth, I thought you were away for the week-end, at least," Mrs. Wenham said. "I suppose you won't want any dinner?"
"No," Joan said. "I shall not