She shook her head and hid her face in her hands.
"Forgive me," he said again. "Oh, don't cry! I'm not worth it. Nothing's worth it. Charles, you brute, lie down." For Charles, in eager sympathy with beauty in distress, was leaping up in vain efforts to find and kiss the hidden face.
"Don't scold him," she said. "I like him." And Edward could have worshiped her for the words. "And, oh," she said, after a minute, "don't scold me, either! I'm so frightfully tired and everything's been so hateful. I thought you'd understand, and that if you cared to find me, you would."
"I did. On the handkerchief. . . . But I suppose you couldn't read it."
"And still," he said, but quite gently now, "I don't understand--"
"Don't you? Don't you see, I thought when you'd had time to think it over you'd be sorry and wish yourself well out of it, and yet feel obliged to go on. And I thought how horrid for you. And how much easier for you if you just thought I'd changed my mind. And then I set out to walk to Seaford and take the train. And then my shoes gave out, and I was so awfully afraid of aunt coming along that way, so that when Mr. Schultz came along it seemed a perfect godsend."
"So that's his foreign and unhappy name?" said Edward. "How did he come to tell it to you?"
"He had to," she said. "I borrowed ten pounds of him. I couldn't have gone to Claridge's without money, you know."
"It's the only hotel that I know. And I had to have his name and address to send it back."
"May I send it back this afternoon?" Edward asked.
"And you take back all you said in the letter? You don't mean it?"
"And it wasn't really only because you thought I. . . ."
"Well, then," said Mr. Basingstoke, happily, "it never happened. I fetched you as we arranged. We go on as we arranged. And Mr. Schultz is only a bad dream to which I owe ten pounds."
"And you're not angry? Then will you lend me some money to buy a hat, and then we will go straight on to London."
"Yes," said Edward, controlling Charles, who had just seen the peaches and thought they looked like something to eat. "But--if you won't think me a selfish brute I should like to say just one thing."
"Yes--" She wrinkled her brows apprehensively.
"Neither Charles nor I have had any luncheon. Would you very much mind if we--"
