But she would wait. She had still no right to know that
Elfrida had returned, and an odd sensitiveness prevented
her from driving instantly to Essex Court to ask.
The next day passed, and the next. Lawrence Cardiff found
no reason to share his daughter's scruples, and went
twice, to meet Mrs. Jordan on the threshold with the
implacable statement that Miss Bell had returned but was
not at home. He found it impossible to mention Elfrida
to Janet now.
John Kendal had gone back to Devonshire to look after
the thinning of a bit of his woodlands--one thing after
another claimed his attention there. Janet had a gay
note from him now and then, always _en camarade_, in
which he deplored himself in the character of an intelligent
land-owner, but in which she detected also a growing
interest and satisfaction in all that he was finding to
do. Janet saw it always with a throb of pleasure; his
art was much to her, but the sympathy that bound him to
the practical side of his world was more, though she
would not have confessed it. She was unconsciously
comforted by the sense that it was on the warm, bright,
comprehensible side of his interest in life that she
touched him--and that Elfrida did not touch him.
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