In an instant she stopped in her walk, and turning towards the place whence the voice came, said, "You there, Geoffrey?"
"Yes, darling,--who else? I was standing at the window when the cab drove up, and saw you get out. By the way, you've not sent away the cab, love; is he paid?"
"No, not yet,--he will--let him stay a little."
"Well, but why keep him up here, my child, where there is no chance of his getting a return-fare? Better pay him and let him go. I'll go and pay him!" and he was leaving the room.
"Let him stay, please," said Margaret in her coldest tones; and Geoffrey turned back at once. But as he turned he saw a thrill run through her, and marked the manner in which she steadied her hand on the mantelpiece on which she was leaning. In an instant he was by her side.
"You are ill, my darling?" he exclaimed. "You have done too much again, and are over-fatigued----"
"I am perfectly well," she said; "it was nothing--or whatever it was, it has passed. I did not know you had returned. I was going to write to you."
"To write to me!" said Geoff in a hollow voice,--"to write to me!"
"To write to you. I had something to tell you--and--and I did not know whether I should ever see you again!"
For an instant the table against which Geoffrey Ludlow stood seemed to spin away under his touch, and the whole room reeled. A deadly faintness crept over him, but he shook it off with one great effort, and said in a very low tone, "I scarcely understand you--please explain."
She must have had the nature of a fiend to look upon that large-souled loving fellow, stricken down by her words as by a sudden blow, and with his heart all bleeding, waiting to hear the rest of her sentence. She had the nature of a fiend, for through her set teeth she said calmly and deliberately:
"I say I did not know whether I should ever see you again. That cab is detained by me to take me away from this house, to which I ought never to have come--which I shall never enter again."
Geoff had sunk into a chair, and clutching the corner of the table with both hands, was looking up at her with a helpless gaze.
"You don't speak!" she continued; "and I can understand why you are silent. This decision has come upon you unexpectedly, and you can scarcely realise its meaning or its origin. I am prepared to explain both to you. I had intended doing so in a letter, which I should have left behind me; but since you are here, it is better that I should speak."
