CHAPTER XIII.
Franklin had all his time free for sitting with Helen under the trees.
Althea's self-reproach, her self-doubt and melancholy, had been effaced by the arrival of Gerald Digby, and, at that epoch of her life, did not return at all.

She had no time for self-doubt or self-reproach, no time even for self-consciousness.

Franklin had faded into the dimmest possible distance; she was only just aware that he was there and that Helen seemed, kindly, to let him talk a good deal to her.

She could not think of Franklin, she could not think of herself, she could think of nobody but one person, for her whole being was absorbed in the thought of Gerald Digby and in the consciousness of the situation that his coming had created.

From soft exhilaration she had passed to miserable depression, yet a depression far different from the stagnant melancholy of her former mood; this was a depression of frustrated feeling, not of lack of feeling, and it was accompanied by the recognition of the fact that she exceedingly disliked Lady Pickering and wished exceedingly that she would go away.