The Bungalow Mystery by Annie Haynes Page A

nervous, that her eyes did not meet his fully.
    â€œHave I ever seen you before?” he asked her suddenly.
    She caught her sleeve in something on the table, and stooped to disentangle it.
    â€œI believe you came to spend the holidays with Master James once, when you were both at Wellington, sir. I was with Mrs. Courtenay then.”
    Roger looked at her again. He had fancied that his recollection of her was more recent; but the memory eluded him. He turned away.
    â€œI suppose that is it, then.”
    Already Courtenay was nodding in his chair. With a sign to Mrs. Miller to take care that he was not to be disturbed, Lavington left the room.
    As he crossed the hall he heard his name. Mrs. Melville, Courtenay’s married sister, who was staying at the Manor for the present, was standing at the library door.
    â€œHow is he?” she asked anxiously.
    Roger went towards her and drew her inside. In their childish days he and pretty Ethel Courtenay had been fast friends.
    â€œThe pain will go off now, I trust. He was much easier when I came down.”
    Great tears were standing in Mrs. Melville’s eyes.
    â€œIs it not terrible Roger?” she said piteously. “To think of him as he was and then to see him now.”
    â€œHe is altered,” Roger acquiesced. “But we ought to remember that it must inevitably sour and warp a man’s whole nature to be thus suddenly and terribly cut off from all that makes life worth living.”
    â€œYes, of course; I am always reminding myself of that.” Mrs. Melville crossed to the window. “I cannot help thinking of poor Daphne Luxmore too,” she said, after a pause, during which Lavington had waited in sympathetic silence. “I went to see her yesterday. She looked so thin and worn and haggard and sometimes it seems only the other day that they were both so happy, and we were looking forward to their wedding. You know he will not even see her?”
    â€œMiss Luxmore!” Roger looked surprised “I’d no idea of that. I have not heard her name mentioned since I came here. I knew of the interrupted marriage of course, and I must confess I have sometimes wondered—I have thought that the fact that she had failed him might account for a good deal of his subsequent bitterness.”
    â€œShe did not fail him.” Mrs. Melville slipped on to the broad window-seat and laid her head back against the woodwork. “Daphne Luxmore’s love has never wavered. She came to Northchester with her father directly after the accident, and I know how she suffered through those long weary days and nights when we scarcely dared to hope that his life would be given back to us. It was a bitter blow to her when he absolutely refused to see her, and she is still unable to bring herself to believe that his decision is final.”
    â€œBut do you mean”—Roger’s tone was expressive of the utmost astonishment—“that he has not seen Miss Luxmore since the accident?”
    â€œHe has not seen her since,’’ Mrs Melville assented. “So far as I know he has not even replied to her letters or sent so much as a message to her since his first refusal to see her.”
    She stopped and, leaning forward, pressed her head against the glass of the window. Outside, in the garden, the flowers were budding bravely, sweet-smelling narcissus, tall upstanding Madonna lilies; farther away, across the park, the wild hyacinths shone faintly, a haze of blue amid the trees; the lilacs were peeping forth from their green leaves; over their heads it was possible to catch a glimpse of the tender unfolding pink of the horse-chestnuts. A mist of tears rose to her eyes and blurred the colours.
    â€œIt wasn’t Daphne’s fault, Roger,” she went on, with a little catch in her breath. “She has been so noble through it all, I know. She has told me herself that she would have married him in spite of everything; that