Part 80 (2/2)
”Stay! Do you think I should stay for one moment in the room with him? No! I shall go in there,” pointing to the next room that opens out of this with folding-doors, ”and wait until he goes away.”
She has hardly time to reach this seclusion when the door is thrown wide, and Sir Maurice is announced.
”n.o.body with you?” says he, glancing somewhat expectantly around him. ”I fancied I heard someone. _So_ glad to find you alone!”
”Yes--yes--perhaps it is better,” says Margaret vaguely, absently, thinking always of the little firebrand in that room beyond, but so near, so fatally near.
”Better? You mean----”
”Well, I mean that t.i.ta has only just left the room,” says Margaret desperately.
”She--is in there, then?” pointing towards the folding-doors.
”Yes. _Do_ speak low. You know she--I can't disguise from you, Maurice, that she----”
Margaret hesitates.
”Hates me? I'm quite aware of that.” A long pause. ”She is well, I hope?” frigidly.
”I think so. She looks well, lovely indeed--a little pale, perhaps.
Maurice,” leaning across and whispering cautiously, ”why don't you try to make a reconciliation of some sort? A beginning might lead to the happiest results, and I am sure you do care for her--and--_do_ try and make up with her.”
”You must be out of your mind!” says Maurice, springing to his feet, and to poor Margaret's abject fear speaking at the top of his lungs.
”With _her,_ when she deliberately deserted me of her own accord--when----”
”Oh, hush, hus.h.!.+” says Margaret in an agony. She makes wild signs to him, pointing towards the closed doors as she does so. A nice girl, we all know, would rather _die_ than put her ear to a keyhole, even if by doing so she could save her neck from the scaffold; but the very best of girls might by chance be leaning against a door through the c.h.i.n.ks of which sounds might enter from the room beyond it.
”She'll _hear_ you!” gasps Margaret.
”I don't care if she does,” says Maurice indignantly, but he calms down for all that, and consents to sit in a chair as far from the folding-doors as possible. ”You have misjudged me all through,” says he.
”I think not--I hope not. But I will say, Maurice, that I think you began your marriage badly, and--you should not have----”
”Have what?”
”Asked Marian to stay with you.”
”That was”--gloomily--”a mistake. I admit that. But have _I_ nothing to complain of?”
”Nothing, I honestly believe.”
Her tone is so honest (Margaret herself is so sweetly honest all through) that he remains silent for a moment. It is, however, a constrained silence. The knowledge that t.i.ta is standing or sitting, laughing or frowning, behind those boards over there, disturbs him in spite of himself.
”Well, I have often thought that, too,” says he, ”and yet I have often thought--the other thing. At all events, you cannot deny that _he_ was in love with her.”
”Why should I deny that? To me”--with a reproachful glance at him--”she seems like one with whom many might be in love.”
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