"Shall I wait till to-morrow, or shall I go back to-day?" Hugh wondered.
"This is getting awful. I don't seem to have a mind of my own, I can't
settle down to a thing. I've got to get a grip on myself. How does the
old poem go: 'If she be fair, but not fair to me, what care I how fair
she be?' That's all right; but I do care, and I can't help it!"

He had made his aimless way back to the West End of London. It was
luncheon time, and he was hesitating between a restaurant and an hotel.

"I'll go back to the hotel, get some lunch, pack up and leave by the
five o'clock train for Hurst Dormer," he decided, and turned to hail a
taxicab.

And, turning, he came suddenly face to face with the girl who was ever
in his thoughts.

She had been helping a middle-aged, pleasant-faced woman out of a cab,
and then, as she turned, their eyes met, and into Joan Meredyth's cheeks
there flashed the tell-tale colour that proved to him and to all the
world that this chance meeting with him meant something to her after
all.




CHAPTER XVIII

"UNGENEROUS"