"He met her a lot in town, I believe. Of course, he'd known her father down here, but had never met the girl herself. I believe it all happened pretty quick. Dunk says so. I don't see how he knows, but every one always seems to know everything about engaged couples."
"What more do you want?--I'm off now to Cherrygarden Farm--I promised Wilsher I'd be round to look at those chicks of his."
"Well, make it half-past eight. It's a good peg over to Cherrygarden, and if I come back by Dormans I can send another wire to Nigel."
"I don't see that it's so ... so very important that he should know."
"You silly old girl! I wasn't going to wire him about that--waste of a good sixpence that would be! But don't you realise that at eight to-night _the_ concert begins? I telegraphed to him an hour ago, just to buck him up beforehand--next time I want to catch him in full squeak."
She was still standing by the window, but something in her words made him go across to her.
"It's the heat, I expect. It's made me feel a little queer too."
"I must--and it's getting cooler now. Take care of yourself, old sister, and don't sit too much in this hot kitchen."
He squeezed her hand, and went out. She watched him go, blessing his obtuseness, even though it was leaving her to fight through her awful hour alone. He went down the path, and out at the gate--then she staggered back into the room, and fell in a heap against the table.
She had not fainted, though she longed to faint--to win the respite of forgetfulness at whatever cost, if only for a minute. She lay an inert, huddled mass against the table-leg, motionless except for a long shudder now and then. All power had left her limbs--they indeed might be in a swoon--but her brain throbbed with a dazzling consciousness; it seemed as if it had drawn into itself all the consciousness of her body, leaving senses dull, nerves dumb, and muscles slack, in order to prime itself with the whole range of feeling.
Strange to say, pain was not the paramount emotion, and despair was scarcely present. Rather, she was consumed by a passionate sense of doubt--of Quentin, of herself, of the whole world. It was like the sudden removal of a prop which one had thought could not be shaken--it was like a sudden precipitation into a world where the ordinary cosmic laws did not hold--she seemed almost to doubt her own identity in that first gasp of revelation.