" He raised his
hat, and, curling his lip maliciously, walked away, without even
so much as shaking hands with her. He knew it was all up. That game
was lost. And, being a man of feeling, he regretted it bitterly.
Gwendoline, for her part, hurried home, all aglow with remorse and
excitement. When she reached the house, she went straight up in
haste to her own bedroom. In spite of her promise, all woman that
she was, she couldn't resist sitting down at once and inditing a
hurried note to Granville Kelmscott.
"Dearest Granville," it said, in a very shaky hand, not unblurred
by tears, "I know all now, and I wonder you thought it could ever
matter. I know you're not the eldest son, and that somebody else
is the heir of Tilgate. And I care for all that a great deal less
than nothing. I love you ten thousand times too dearly to mind one
pin whether you're rich or poor. And, rich or poor, whenever you
like, I'll marry you.
"Yours ever devotedly and unalterably,
"GWENDOLINE."
She sealed it up in haste and ran out with it, all tremors, to the
post by herself. Her hands were hot. She was in a high fever. But
Mr. Montague Nevitt, that man of feeling, thus balked of his game,
walked off his disappointment as well as he could by a long smart
tramp across the springy downs, lunching at a wayside inn on bread
and cheese and beer, and descending as the evening shades drew in
on the Guildford station.
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