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"Only a knave." "You may think it right to joke over the ruin of Miltoun's life," murmured Agatha; "I don't." Barbara's eyes grew bright; and in a hard voice she answered: "The world is not your nursery, Angel!" Agatha closed her lips very tightly, as who should imply: "Then it ought to be!" But she only answered: "I don't think you know that I saw you just now in Gustard's."
Barbara eyed her for a moment in amazement, and began to laugh. "I see," she said; "monstrous depravity poor old Gustard's!" And still laughing that dangerous laugh, she turned on her heel and went out.
Owing to this news of Miltoun the journey to Scotland had been postponed. She parried with cool ingenuity each attempt made by Lady Valleys to draw her into conversation on the subject of that meeting at Gustard's, nor would she talk of her brother; in every other way she was her usual self.
The doubt in Agatha's mind whether she should tell or no, had been terribly resolved by little Ann, who in a pause of conversation had announced: "We saw Auntie Babs and Mr. Courtier in Gustard's, but we didn't speak to them." Upset by the events of the afternoon, Lady Valleys had not shown her usual 'savoir faire'. She had told her husband.
When, in response to that note, Courtier entered the well-known confectioner's called Gustard's, it was still not quite tea-time, and there seemed to him at first no one in the room save three middle-aged women packing sweets; then in the corner he saw Barbara. The blood was no longer in his head; he was pale, walking down that mahogany-coloured room impregnated with the scent of wedding-cake.
He got up, shook himself, as a dog shakes off a beating, and walked away, with his mouth set very firm. Left alone among the little mahogany tables of Gustard's, where the scent of cake and of orange-flower water made happy all the air, Barbara had sat for some minutes, her eyes cast down as a child from whom a toy has been taken contemplates the ground, not knowing precisely what she is feeling.
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