Page:Wildwildheart00reesiala.pdf/178

“Is it important that I should know what it is?”

“Yes.”

She waited for him to continue, but at last he said:

“I can’t tell you here. It’s too... too difficult. Can I see you somewhere this evening?”

“Come round to my rooms.”

“About eight-thirty?”

“Yes—that’ll be all right.”

“Have you had any tea?”

“I was just going with Nell Brunton to the Ralstons’ car.”

“I’ll come with you.”

They moved back across the lawn, and steered their way through the shifting crowd towards the rear of the stand. Scraps of conversation came to Ann, and once, wedged behind a small group of smartly dressed women who had formed part of the luncheon picnic, Ann heard the discussion of a pending divorce case—whose she didn’t know.

“Phil is in Miller’s office—he saw the divorce papers—citation he called it. She’s mentioned, I tell you, as co-respondent.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. Phil told me today. I know they’ve often been together. I was with Nell one morning and saw him coming away from her place.”

Ann and Holmes at last reached the parked cars, and the unpacked tea-hampers; and here Holmes was greeted with some surprise, but with decided cordiality by all the men, and most of the women. The fact of a farmer’s failure in the Wairiri district had always the effect of arousing the ready sympathy of his more fortunate friends.