Dick stared for a moment. He was pitiably, mercifully stupid. His stare might really have been interpreted as one of mere astonishment. Then:
"Really?" he asked. "Aren't you and Mrs. Drent too busy?"
"No, indeed. Our arrangements are all made."
They shook hands, and Dick took Christina's hand. She felt, always, that Dick looked upon her as a friend. His eyes, now, revealed to her his boyish wonder and gladness. She and Milly were left alone. Milly, still with the sauntering step, went to the mantelpiece and touched her hair, looking in the glass. "Dear me, how late!" she said, her eyes turning to the clock. "How dreadful of us to have kept poor Dick up so late. Shall we go to bed, dearest? I'm dreadfully sleepy."
"You didn't mean me to come for the walk, too, did you?" Christina asked, in a voice as easy, putting up her hand to hide a yawn. "It's our usual hour;--that's why I ask. But you meant him to understand that you wanted it to be a _tête-à-tête_, didn't you? It's all right. I can go to Mrs. Pomfret's for my fitting at eleven."
"But, dearest, of course you are coming," said Milly instantly.
Their eyes were on each other now, and their faces armed and masked. Christina measured the depth of estrangement in all that the flexible, disingenuous acquiescence hid of disappointment, bitterness, even hatred.
"Oh no, no, indeed; I think you ought to have your good-bye walk alone," she insisted. "He will expect it now. I'm sure he thought that you particularly wanted it to be alone."
"He couldn't have thought anything so unlikely," said Milly. "It is our good-bye walk with you."
So Christina went with them. She felt herself still trembling in every nerve from the appalling risk she had run, and ran; for which was the greater risk, that Milly should realize her guile and hate her, or that Milly and Dick should come to an understanding? She could not tell; nor where she stood; yet triumph trembled in her fear. She had succeeded. They had not spoken together. In the park she and Milly bade Dick good-bye. Dick's train was to go in the early evening. Milly, when they reached home--and she had talked lightly if not gaily in the hansom--said that she had rather a headache. She would have her luncheon in her room and sleep through the afternoon and be fit and fresh for the play that night. Christina knew in an instant that a last desperate hope cowered beneath the affected languor and lightness; and it watched her, feverishly, like the eyes of a tracked animal creeping in an underbrush past enemies' guns. When she replied, kissing her friend tenderly, that a good rest was the best of cures for a headache and that she herself would do some shopping and go to the tea for which they were engaged, these large, sick eyes of Milly's hope and fear widened and shone with a recovered security. She wanted to be left alone that afternoon. She would not go to Dick; Christina knew her too accurately to believe that possible, and Dick had been too stupid to make it conceivable; but what Milly hoped for was a sudden illumination of Dick's stupidity; some tug of unendurable pain or surmise that would bring him back on the chance of seeing her again. Milly's logic was instinctive, but Christina believed that it was sound. Dick, she, too, felt sure of it, would come. She lunched and then she sat at her writing-table and wrote some notes, looking out at the street, and then, when an hour approached in which a caller might appear, she went out.