But on this he dared not dwell. She was still Bylant’s wife, and Bylant was his patient. He devoted his skill to saving the man’s life, avoided Gita, and turned to Polly for distraction. And for all he knew Gita might really be consumed with remorse; or if undergoing a profound revulsion of feeling, needed only that first interview with her prostrate husband to melt into pity and the determination to atone with a lifetime of friendly devotion. Not love. If that had been latent it would have sprung to life in the moment she had turned on the light and seen him wounded and unconscious at her feet. But there was small consolation in the thought that even if Eustace, pursuing his new advantage, called in the services of an endocrinologist, it would avail him nothing unless Gita loved him. And Gita was by no means the type of woman to translate pity into love. But she might immolate herself, nevertheless. He had walked with Polly during that interview, hardly knowing whether his answers to her lively sallies were rational or mere sputterings from an overcharged brain. She had told him finally he was absent-minded and run off to her car. And when he looked in through the window and saw Gita sitting in that high-backed chair like an image of arrogant fate he knew that Eustace had lost again. CHAPTER XXI Topper announced luncheon. It was served in the dining-room, as Gita had taken a dislike to the breakfast-room, so intimately associated with Eustace and Elsie; and although she had sat beside Eustace here on the night of the wedding, their chairs tied together with a white ribbon, and listened to speeches and toasts, the only memory that emerged definitely was the white flounces De Witt Turner had sewed on her dignified ancestor’s uniform of state. He had looked excruciatingly funny and she had fastened her mind on those flounces and refrained from gritting her teeth when toasting bores were congratulating Eustace and assuming she was congratulating herself. Geoffrey Pelham had sat on her side of the table and she had not seen him again until he bade her good-night. Then she had been too excited over her beautiful wedding-presents to give him a parting glance. The dining-room was high and dark and austere. Black-browed Carterets in tarnished frames seemed to look out of the wall itself. But she felt a Carteret among them, severed the more completely from that brief period when all but the blessed sophisticates had called her Mrs. Bylant.