“What happened then?”
“The great thing was to keep it quiet. Now, wasn’t it? And there was the shell-shock—or so Eustace—Captain Cranster, I mean—said, anyhow. So, on the Colonel’s advice, Mamma squared the check business and—and they gave him twenty-four hours to clear out. Papa—I call the Colonel Papa, you know, though he’s really my stepfather—used a little influence, I think. Anyhow it was managed. I never saw him again, Mary.”
“Poor dear! Was it very bad?”
“Yes! But—suppose we had been married! Mary, where should I have been?”
Mary Arkroyd left that problem alone. “Were you very fond of him?” she asked.
“Awfully!” Cynthia turned up to her friend pretty blue eyes suffused in tears. “It was the end of the world to me. That there could be such men! I went to bed. Mamma could do nothing with me. Oh, well, she wrote to you about all that.”
“She told me you were in a pretty bad way.”
“I was just desperate! Then one day—in bed—the thought of you came. It seemed an absolute inspiration. I remembered the card you sent on my last birthday—you’ve never forgotten my birthdays, though it’s years since we met—with your new address here—and your ‘Doctor,’ and all the letters after your name! I thought it rather funny.” A faint smile, the first since Miss Walford’s arrival at Inkston, probably the first since Captain Eustace Cranster’s shell-shock had wrought catastrophe—appeared on her lips. “How I waited for your answer! You don’t mind having me, do you, dear? Mamma insisted on suggesting the P.G. arrangement. I was afraid you’d shy at it.”
“Not a bit! I should have liked to have you anyhow, but I can make you much more comfortable with the P.G. money. And your maid too—she looks as if she was accustomed to the best! By the way, need she be quite so tearful? She’s more tearful than you are yourself.”
“Jeanne’s very, very fond of me,” Cynthia murmured reproachfully.
“Oh, well get her out of that,” said Mary briskly. “The tears, I mean, not the fondness. I’m very fond of you myself. Six
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