"
"Everybody," said Mary, "is looking bad this muggy weather. That
reminds me, how's the baby?"
"'E's woorse again, Miss. I tall Assy she'll navver rear 'im."
"Has the doctor seen him to-day?"
"Naw, naw, nat yat. But 'e'll look in, 'e saays, afore 'e goas."
Mary looked at the clock. Rowcliffe left the surgery at four-thirty.
It was now five minutes past.
She wondered: Did he know, then, or did he not know? Would Gwenda have
written to him? Was it because she had not written that he was looking
bad, or was it because she had written and he knew?
She thought and thought it over; and under all her thinking there
lurked the desire to know whether Rowcliffe knew and how he was taking
it, and under her desire the longing, imperious and irresistible, to
see him.
She would have to ask him to the house. She had not forgotten that she
had to ask him, that she was pledged to ask him on Ally's account if,
as Gwenda had put it, she was to play the game.
But she had had more than one motive for her delay. It would look
better if she were not in too great a hurry. (She said to herself it
would look better on Ally's account.) The longer he was kept away (she
said to herself, that he was kept away from Ally) the more he would
be likely to want to come. Sufficient time must elapse to allow of his
forgetting Gwenda. It was not well that he should be thinking all the
time of Gwenda when he came. (She said to herself it was not well on
Ally's account.
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