Part 77 (1/2)

_ ”I!_ What have I got to do with it?” he laughs contemptuously.

_”She_ has arranged everything. The farther she goes from me the better. I am sorry that the resting-place she has chosen is so near.

Park Lane as usual, I suppose, Margaret? But it won't last, my dear girl. She will go farther afield soon.”

”You think her fickle, I don't,” says Margaret gravely. ”You have misjudged her all along. I believe she loves me. I believe,” slowly, ”she has a great capacity for loving.”

”Are you alluding to her capacity for loving Mr. Hescott?”

”That is unworthy of you,” says his cousin. She rises. ”I have only a few moments--and your wife is coming with me, and I would say one word to you before I go. She is young--_very_ young. She is a mere child.”

”She is old enough, I presume, to know right from wrong.”

”She is the youngest creature I know,” persists Margaret, in her sweet angelic way, that is all charity, all kindness and all forbearance. ”And what a little fairy of a thing! A man should have patience with her. _Have_ patience, Maurice.”

”Oh! All you women support each other,” says he, frowning. ”You wish me to believe that because Nature has built her in a smaller mould than other women, I should therefore condone her faults.”

”Such pretty faults,” says Margaret. ”A little hot temper, a little sauciness, a little petulance--what more?”

Rylton's lip curls.

”If you are such a devotee at her shrine as all that comes to, there is nothing more to be said. Her flirtation with her cousin----”

_”Was_ it a flirtation?”

”There are new names for things every day. Give it the new name and be done with it.”

”There can be no new name for a mere imagination. I don't believe she ever had any--any love affair with Mr. Hescott. I don't really, and,” boldly, ”in your heart I don't think you believe it either.

No, don't turn away, _don't._ It is for your sake I speak, because I have always your interest at heart; Maurice, I entreat you to pause, to think. Is all the fault on t.i.ta's side? Have you loved her as she should be loved?--that little, quick, enthusiastic creature. Where has your heart been since your marriage!”

”You go very far,” says Rylton, pale, cold.

”I know; I know. And I am only a cousin, a mere n.o.body. But I love the child, and I _must_ speak. You will hate me for it, perhaps, but why has Marian been here?”

”t.i.ta asked her.”

”Is that the whole truth?”

”No; the half,” says Sir Maurice. He rouses himself from the lethargy into which he has fallen, and looks at Margaret. ”I promised Marian an invitation here; I asked t.i.ta for that invitation later. Marian came. I believed there would be harm in her coming, and I steeled myself against it. I tell you, Margaret--I tell you, and you only--that when she came the harm--was--well”--straightening himself--”there was _no_ harm. All at once I found I did not care.

My love for her seemed dead. It was terrible, but it was the fact; I seemed to care for nothing--nothing at all. Margaret, believe me, it was all dead. I tell you this, that the night when I discovered that, I longed for death as a solution of my misery. To care for nothing--nothing!”

”There was something,” says Margaret. ”There was t.i.ta!”

”Was there?”

”Certainly there was.”

”She has proved it,” says Rylton, breaking into a sort of heart-broken mirth.

”She is angry now,” says Margaret eagerly. ”She is very naturally--unhinged; and she has been told----”