Deleah, left to herself--was it for an hour? was it for a minute?--looked
with eyes dazed with happiness upon the hands that had been crushed in
his.
"I used to think that to be loved by him would be heaven," she said. "And
now--now I feel nothing. I am numb."
He came back very grave, his face unusually pale. "Your cab is waiting. I
will take you home, my dear child," he said.
She crossed the big yard again at his side. The drayman was still at his
horses' heads, the groom was taking the riding-horse round to the stables.
On the opposite side of the yard beneath one of the arches of a heavy
colonnade, a couple of policemen stood. One of them was making notes in a
book. A group of workpeople stood near by; and Deleah remembered
afterwards that there was about them and the rest an air of suspending
something they were saying or doing while their chief and the girl at his
side walked to the great entrance gates.
"A cab was waiting, by good luck," Sir Francis said as he put her in it,
and Deleah awoke, it seemed to her, for the first time since he had called
her name as she leant against his door, to full consciousness.
"It was mine," she said. "I took it to get to you quickly--before you
started for home.
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