“Three days--a poor sort of Saturday to Monday affair,” said Mrs. Wradisley. “You must come again and give us the rest that is owing to us.”
“It is just my beastly luck,” Bertram said.
As for Lucy, she tried to throw a great deal of meaning into her eyes as she bade him good-by; but Bertram did not in the least understand what the meaning was. He had an uncomfortable feeling for the moment, as if it might be that Lucy’s heart had been touched, unluckily, as her brother’s had been; but grew hot all over with shame, looking again at her innocent, intent face though what was in it, it was not given to him to read. What Lucy would have said had she dared would have been, “Oh, Mr. Bertram, go home to your wife and live happy ever after!” but this of course she had no right to say. Ralph, however, the downright, whom no one suspected of tact or delicacy, said something like it as he walked with his friend to the station. Or rather it was at the very last moment as he shook hands through the window of the railway carriage.
“Good-by, Bertram,” he said; “I’d hunt up Mrs. Bertram and make it up, if I were you. Things like that can’t go on forever, don’t you know.”
“There’s something in what you say, Wradisley,” Bertram replied.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Strangers, by Margaret Oliphant