“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 some time — 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 this laughing, generously passing off his annoyance in a jest.
“I feel so sorry,” she said.
“What for?”
“Oh — don’t let us talk about him — talk about something else. I can’t bear to talk about — him.”
“All right,” he replied — and after an awkward little pause, “What sort of a time had you in Nottingham?”
“Oh, a fine time.”
“You’ll enjoy yourself in the shops between now and — July. Some time I’ll go with you and see them.”
“Very well.”
“That sounds as if you don’t want me to go. Am I already in the way on a shopping expedition, like an old husband?”
“I should think you would be.”
“That’s nice of you! Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“Oh, I suppose you’d hang about.”
“I’m much too well brought up.”
“Rebecca has lighted the hall lamp.”
“Yes, it’s grown quite dark. I was here early. You never gave me a good word for it.”
“I didn’t notice. There’s a light in the dining-room, we’ll go there.”
They went into the dining-room. She stood by the piano and carefully took off the wrap. Then she wandered listlessly about the room for a minute.
“Aren’t you coming to sit down?” he said, pointing to the seat on the couch beside him.
“Not just now,” she said, trailing aimlessly to the piano. She sat down and began to play at random, from memory. Then she did that most irritating thing — played accompaniments to songs, with snatches of the air where the voice should have predominated.
“I say Lettie . . . ” he interrupted after a time.
“Yes,” she replied, continuing to play.
“It’s not very interesting . . . ”
“No?”— she continued to play.
“Nor very amusing . . . ”
She did not answer. He bore it for a little time longer, then he said:
“How much longer is it going to last, Lettie?”
“What?”
“That sort of business . . . ”
“The piano? — I’ll stop playing if you don’t like it.” She did not, however, cease.
“Yes — and all this dry business.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? — you make me.”
There she went on, tinkling away at “If I built a world for you, dear”.
“I say, stop it, do!” he cried.
She tinkled to the end of the verse, and very slowly closed the piano.
“Come on — come and sit down,” he said.
“No, I don’t want to — I’d rather have gone on playing.”
“Go on with your damned playing then, and I’ll go where there’s more interest.”
“You ought to like it.”
He did not answer, so she turned slowly round on the stool, opened the piano, and laid her fingers on the keys. At the sound of the chord he started up, saying: “Then I’m going.”
“‘t’s very early — why?” she said, through the calm jingle of “Meine Ruh is hin —”
He stood biting his lips. Then he made one more appeal. “Lettie!”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to leave off — and be-amiable?”
“Amiable?”
“You are a jolly torment. What’s upset you now?”
“Nay, it’s not I who am upset.”
“I’m glad to hear it — what do you call yourself?”
“I? — nothing.”
“Oh, well, I’m going then.”
“Must you? — so early tonight?”
He did not go, and she played more and more softly, languidly, aimlessly. Once she lifted her head to speak, but did not say anything.
“Look here!” he ejaculated all at once, so that she started, and jarred the piano, “What do you mean by it?”
She jingled leisurely a few seconds before answering, then she replied:
“What a worry you are!”
“I suppose you want me out of the way while you sentimentalise over that milkman. You needn’t bother. You can do it while I’m here. Or I’ll go and leave you in peace. I’ll go and call him back for you, if you like — if that’s what you want —”
She turned on the piano stool slowly and looked at him, smiling faintly.
“It is very good of you!” she said.
He clenched his fists and grinned with rage.
“You tantalising little —” he began, lifting his fists expressively. She smiled. Then he swung round, knocked several hats flying off the stand in the hall, slammed the door, and was gone.
Lettie continued to play for some time, after which she went up to her own room.
Leslie did not return to us the next day, nor the day after. The first day Marie came and told us he had gone away to Yorkshire to see about the new mines that were being sunk there, and was likely to be absent for a week or so. These business