Gladys opened her mouth to say something, and closed it again.
She had guessed that there had been something behind that urgent wire from Jimmy, but she wisely asked no questions. They went back into the house together.
"You"ll have to know in the end, so I may as well tell you now,"
Christine said hopelessly. She sat down on the rug by the fire, a forlorn little figure enough in her black frock.
She told the whole story from beginning to end. She blamed n.o.body; she just spoke as if the whole thing had been a muddle which n.o.body could have foreseen or averted.
Gladys listened silently. She was a very sensible girl; she seldom gave an impulsive judgment on any subject; but now----
"Jimmy wants his neck wrung," she said vehemently.
Christine looked up with startled eyes.
"Oh, how can you say such a thing!"
"Because it"s true." Gladys looked very angry. "He"s behaved in a rotten way; men always do, it seems to me. He married you to spite this--this other woman, whoever she was! and then--even then he didn"t try to make it up to you, or be ordinarily decent and do his best, did he?"
"He didn"t love me, you see; and so----" Christine defended him.
"He"ll never love anyone in the wide world except himself," Gladys declared disgustedly. "I remember years ago, when we were all kiddies together, how selfish he was, and how you always gave in to him.
Christine"--she stretched out her hand impulsively to the younger girl--"do you love him very much?" she asked.
Christine put her head down on her arms.
"Oh, I did--I did," she said, ashamedly. "Sometimes I wonder if--if he hadn"t been quite so--so sure of me! if--if he would have cared just a little bit more. He must have known all along that I wanted him; and so----" She broke off desolately.
The two girls sat silent for a moment.
"And now--what"s he going to do now?" Gladys demanded.
Christine sighed.
"I told him I didn"t want to see him. I told him I didn"t want him to come down here for six months--and he promised. . . . He isn"t to come or even to write unless--unless I ask him to."
"And then--what happens then?"
Christine began to cry.
"Oh, I don"t know--I don"t know," she sobbed. "I am so miserable--I wish I were dead."
Gladys laid a hand on her bowed head.
"You"re so young, Christine," she said sadly. "Somehow I don"t believe you"ll ever grow up." She had not got the heart to tell her that she thought this six months separation could do no good at all--that it would only tend to widen the breach already between them.
She was a pretty good judge of character; she knew quite well what sort of a man Jimmy Challoner was. And six months--well, six months was a long time.
"Mr. Kettering knows Jimmy"s brother," Christine said presently, drying her eyes. "So I suppose if he comes to live anywhere near here, he will know what--what is the matter with--with me and Jimmy, and he"ll write and tell Horace."
"And then Jimmy will get his allowance stopped, and serve him right,"
said Gladys bluntly.
Christine cried out in dismay:
"Oh, but that would be dreadful! What would he do?"
"Work, like other men, of course."
But Christine would not listen.
"I shall ask Mr. Kettering not to tell Horace--if I ever see him again," she said agitatedly.
Gladys laughed dryly.
"Oh, you"ll see him again right enough," she said laconically.
CHAPTER XVII
JIMMY BREAKS OUT
It took Jimmy a whole week to realise that Christine meant what she said when she asked him not to write to her, or go near her. At first he had been so sure that in a day or two at most she would be sorry, and want to see him; somehow he could not believe that the little unselfish girl he had known all his life could so determinedly make up her mind and stick to it.
He grumbled and growled to Sangster every time they met.
"I was a fool to let her go. The law is on my side; I could have insisted that she stayed with me." He looked at his friend. "_I could have insisted, I say!_" he repeated.
Sangster raised his eyes.
"I"m not denying it; but it"s much wiser as it is. Leave her alone, and things will work out their own salvation."
"She"ll forget all about me, and then what will happen?" Jimmy demanded. "A nice thing--a very nice thing that would be."
"No doubt she thinks that is what you wish her to do."
Jimmy called him a fool; he threw a half-smoked cigarette into the fire, and sat watching it burn with a scowl on his face.
The last week had seemed endless. He had kept away from the club; the men in the club always knew everything--he had learned that by previous experience; he had no desire for the shower of chaff which he knew would greet his appearance there.
Married a week--and now Christine had gone! It made his soul writhe to think of it. It had hurt enough to be jilted; but this--well, this struck at his pride even more deeply.
"I thought you promised me to go down to Upton House and see how things were," he growled at Sangster. "You haven"t been, have you? I suppose you don"t mean to go either?"
"My dear chap----"
"Oh, don"t "dear chap" me," Jimmy struck in irritably. "Go if you mean to go. . . . After all, if anything happens to Christine, it"s my responsibility----"