“You don’t know, Cynny. We none of us know yet. Since I’ve seen her I feel ever so much more hopeful. Because she is so palpably wretched.”

“You think she’s fallen in love with Stephen when he wasn’t there to be fallen in love with?”

“How quaint! Of course I don’t. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Only more often than not it doesn’t. I think she misses Stephen.”

Cynthia lifted one gauntleted hand and struck the steering wheel with it, smartly.

“Well she may! I can’t think of her without boiling over! That she couldn’t see how dear Stephen is, and how absolutely white! He ‘got on her nerves’! I could have cried when he told us that. Stephen! Got on her nerves! My God, she doesn’t deserve to have him back again! Why couldn’t the silly, silly fool fall in love with Nina? Why must he eat his heart on a selfish, empty-headed little nonentity like Elizabeth?”

“Darling, I wish you wouldn’t. You’ll run into something in a minute, and we shall be killed. So unpleasant. Nina and Stephen were never attracted to one another that way, though I must say I did think so at one time. Stephen marries a nonentity, and Nina becomes perfectly maudlin about a fond, foolish youth whose name I never can remember. Which reminds me that I do wish she’d get married and have done with it. She’s positively wearisome in this love-lorn condition. Another thing, Cynny:—If Elizabeth returns to Stephen, it’ll be a very good thing that Nina’ll have gone with her horrible soldier to India. Nina was partly the cause of the trouble. I’m perfectly sure of it.”

“Probably,” Cynthia said. “Elizabeth’s silly enough for anything.”

“For goodness’ sake, mind this ’bus!” implored Mrs. Ramsay. “I can’t possibly be killed to-day; I’ve got Colonel Farncombe coming to dinner.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

At Ripley on Sunday, Elizabeth met John Cary. She was lunching with Wendell in a room crowded with holiday-makers when Caryll and two other men appeared in the doorway. She exclaimed when she saw him, and was carried back, mentally, to her wedding-day, on which occasion he had been such an efficient best-man.

He came now to her table, and shook hands.

“Er—how do you do? Very delightful to meet again like this. You’re—er—staying in town, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Oh, Mr. Wendell—Mr. Caryll!”

Caryll looked hard at Wendell, then bowed, and said, “How do you do?” in a voice that was quite expressionless. He turned again to Elizabeth.

“Beautiful place this, isn’t it, Mrs. Ramsay? I suppose you motored down?”

“Mr. Wendell brought me,” she nodded. “I mustn’t keep you from your friends. Perhaps we shall meet again some time.”