Free Over the Blue Mountains by Mary Burchell Page B

much like her usual voice. “Is Mr. Eland in?”
    “No. I’m afraid he’s away.” For a moment the woman looked at her with the oddest expression. An expression in which embarrassment and curiosity and—yes, a sort of pity—were mingled. Then she added, as though she knew only one way of carrying out an unpleasant task, “He’s away on his honeymoon. Went two weeks ago. I guess you’re his girl from back home, aren’t you?”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    For a moment Juliet thought she would faint. She told herself that what this woman had just said could not possibly mean what those words had always meant before. There was some terrible, monstrous mistake somewhere. Or else she was dreaming and would wake up presently in her bed, at home in London.
    But, at the thought of that distant, safe place of her own—now lost forever—Juliet felt as though an icy breath of reality pierced mists of illusion that had clung to her for weeks.
    This was no dream, after all, no mistake, no fantastic situation from which there would be some equally fantastic but easy escape. She was right in the midst of a real and dreadful problem. One with which she must deal—alone, and at once.
    “I don’t think ... I quite ... understand you,” she said faintly at last. “We can’t be speaking of the same person.”
    But she knew they were, and the woman at the door quickly dispelled any doubt on that point.
    “Oh, yes,” she insisted, embarrassed but firm. “Martin Eland. I knew just as soon as your telegram came, of course, that you couldn’t have got his letter explaining things.”
    Even at that moment, in the depths of her despair, Juliet felt her pride revolt at the thought that this perfect stranger apparently knew so much more about her affairs—and Martin’s—than she did herself. But she swallowed her pride, and when the woman said, not unkindly, “Would you like to come in,” she was about to step over the threshold when suddenly she remembered her luggage, left behind in the car—and then Max Ormathon—and then, inevitably, the larger aspect of her own appalling situation.
    As that particular chasm seemed to yawn in front of her, again Juliet experienced a wave of sick faintness. But again she fought it down.
    “Would you—wait just a minute, please.”
    She turned and went rather slowly out to the car once more. Max was still at the wheel, apparently a good deal occupied with a group of children who were playing on the veranda of one of the bungalows opposite. As she came up to the car, however, he turned his head and then made to get out.
    “Hello. Shall I bring up the luggage for you?”
    “No—wait a moment...” She put out a hand to stop him, and as she did so, she stared at him with more shocked misery in her eyes that she knew. “Could you please wait just a little while? Something has—happened, and I want to hear about it.”
    In spite of the detaining hand, he got out of the car, and stood looking down at her. Big, dominating and somehow faintly consoling.
    “What’s the matter, my dear? Has there been some sort of accident?”
    “No,” Juliet said slowly. “No, it wasn’t even accidental. It was quite—deliberate. He has ... married someone else.”
    “Oh, God! I’m sorry.”
    She could not imagine why she had told him—baldly like that, as though he had a right to know and were someone in whom she would naturally confide. But there was no doubting the sincerity of his dismayed sympathy.
    “Look here, would you like me to come in with you now?”
    His hand was under her elbow, and though the touch was quite light, it gave her the curious feeling that there was still something between her and ultimate disaster.
    She did not even stop to think about the humiliation of having to hear the truth from a stranger, in front of someone else who was also virtually a stranger. She only knew that Max Ormathon’s presence was something to be thankful for in the welter of dismay and bewilderment that had