Part 20 (2/2)

That one time she came out of the library at the very moment he had arrived. They met in the hall, and it was quite impossible to avoid seeing him. She came forward with a charming air.

”Is it you? How long since we have met!” said she. Her tone was evenness itself; she was smiling brightly. If she was pale, he could not see it in the darkening twilight. ”How troublesome these elections are! I see you have been staying with the Montgomerys; I do hope he will get in. But Conservatives are nowhere nowadays.

Truth lies buried in a well. That's a good old saying.” She nodded to him and went up a step or two of the stairs, then looked back.

”Don't stay away from The Place on my account,” said she, with rather an amused smile. ”I like to have you here. And see how badly you are behaving to the beloved one!”

She smiled again, with even more amus.e.m.e.nt than before, and continued her graceful way up the stairs. He had turned away sore at heart. She had not even thought it worth her while to make an appeal to him. If she had! He told himself that even then, if she had said but one word, he would have thrown up everything, even his _honour_, and gone with her to the ends of the earth. But she had not said that word--she had not cared--_sufficiently_.

And now it is indeed all over! They have come back from the church--t.i.ta just as she is every day, without a cloud on her brow, and laughing with everybody, and telling everybody, without the least disguis.e.m.e.nt, that she is so _glad_ she is married, because now Uncle George can never claim her again. She seems to have no thought but this. She treats her newly-made husband in a merry, perfectly unembarra.s.sed, rather _boyish_ style, and is, in effect, quite delighted with her new move.

Sir Maurice has gone through it all without a flaw. At the breakfast he had made quite a finished little speech (he could never have told you afterwards what it was about), and when the bride was upstairs changing her wedding garments he had gone about amongst his guests with an air that left nothing to be desired. He looks quite an ideal bridegroom. A mad longing for solitude drags him presently, however, into a small anteroom, opening off a larger room beyond. The carriage that is to convey him to the station is at the door, and he almost swears at the delay that arises from t.i.ta's non-appearance.

Yet here--here is rest. Here there is no one to breathe detestable congratulations into his ear--_no_ one.

A tall, slight figure rises from a couch that is half hidden by a Chinese screen. She comes forward a step or two. Her face is pale.

It is Marian Bethune.

”You!” says she in a low, strange voice. ”Have _you _come here, too, to _think?”_ She speaks with difficulty. Then all at once she makes a stray movement with her hands, and brings herself to her senses by a pa.s.sionate effort. ”You are like me, you want quiet,” says she, with a very ordinary little laugh; ”so you came here. Well, shall I leave you?”

She is looking very beautiful. Her pallor, the violet shades beneath her eyes, all tend to make her lovely.

”It is you who have left me.”

”I? Oh no! Oh, think!” says she, laughing still.

Rylton draws a long breath.

”After all, it could never have come to anything,” says he, in a dull sort of way.

”Never, never,” smiling.

”I don't believe you care,” says he bitterly.

She looks at him. It is a curious look.

”Why should I? Do _you_ care?”

He turns away.

”Don't let us part bad friends,” says she, going to him, and twining one of her hands round his arm. ”What have I done to you, or you to me? How have we been enemies? It is fate, it is poverty that has been our common enemy, Maurice, remember what we _have_ been to each other.”

”It is what I dare not remember,” says he hoa.r.s.ely.

His face is resolutely turned from hers.

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