He would fight again--next week, if
necessary--and he would win!
As to the particular and personal calumnies with which he had been
assailed--why, of course, he absolved Diana. She could have had no
hand in them.
Suddenly he pushed his papers from him with a hasty unconscious
movement.
In driving home that evening past the gates and plantations of Beechcote
it seemed to him that he had seen through the trees--in the
distance--the fluttering of a white dress. Had the news of his
inglorious success just reached her? How had she received it? Her face
came before him--the frank eyes--the sweet troubled look.
He dropped his head upon his arms. A sick distaste for all that he had
been doing and thinking rose upon him, wavelike, drowning for a moment
the energies of mind and will. Had anything been worth while--for
_him_--since the day when he had failed to keep the last tryst which
Diana had offered him?
He did not, however, long allow himself a weakness which he knew well he
had no right to indulge. He roused himself abruptly, took pen and paper,
and wrote a little note to Alicia, sending it round to her through
her maid.
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