The Three Sisters Part 65

He smiled.

"You won't come for anything but a wedding?"

"A funeral might fetch me."

"Well, Gwenda, I can't say you look as if London agreed with you particularly."

"I can't say you look as if Garthdale agreed very well with you."

"I'm only tired--tired to death."

"I'm sorry."

"I want a holiday. And I'm going to get one--for a month. _You_ look as if you'd been burning the candle at both ends, if you'll forgive my saying so."

"Oh--for all the candles I burn! It isn't such awfully hard work, you know."

"What isn't?"

"What I'm doing."

He stopped straight in the narrow path and looked at her.

"I say, what _are_ you doing?"

She told him.

His face expressed surprise and resentment and a curious wonder and bewilderment.

"But I thought--I thought----They told me you were having no end of a time."

"Tunbridge Wells isn't very amusing. No more is Lady Frances."

Again he stopped dead and stared at her.

"But they told me--I mean I thought you were in London with Mrs.

Cartaret, all the time."

She laughed.

"Did Papa tell you that?"

"No. I don't know who told me. I--I got the impression." He almost stammered. "I must have misunderstood."

She meditated.

"It sounds awfully like Papa. He simply can't believe, poor thing, that I'd stick to anything so respectable."

"Hah!" He laughed out his contempt for the Vicar. He had forgotten that he too had wondered.

"Chuck it, Gwenda," he said, "chuck it."

"I can't," she said. "Not yet. It's too lucrative."

"But if it makes you seedy?"

"It doesn't. It won't. It isn't hard work. Only----" She broke off.

"It's time for you to go."

"Steve! Steve!"

Rowcliffe's youngest cousin was calling from the study window.

"Come along. Mary's ready."

"All right," he shouted. "I'm coming."

But he stood still there at the end of the orchard under the gray wall.

"Good-bye, Steven."

Gwenda put out her hand.

He held her with his troubled eyes. He did not see her hand. He saw her eyes only that troubled his.

"I say, is it very beastly?"

"No. Not a bit. You must go, Steven, you must go."

"If I'd only known," he persisted.

They were going down the path now toward the house.

"I wouldn't have let you----"

"You couldn't have stopped me."

(It was what she had always said to all of them.)

She smiled. "You didn't stop me going, you know."

"If you'd only told me--"

She smiled again, a smile as of infinite wisdom. "Dear Steven, there was nothing to tell."

They had come to the door in the wall. It led into the garden. He opened to let her pa.s.s through.

The wedding-party was gathered together on the flagged path before the house. It greeted them with laughter and cries, cheerfully ironic.