Part 20 (1/2)

She was almost beautiful in the moonlight, quite ethereal-looking, and her hair a nimbus for that small white face of hers; just as small, just as white, and just as smooth as when those big eyes used to look up into our eyes under an Indian moon. And she is always agreeable, always witty, or at least ”smart.” Still, I must confess that I was ungallantly absent-minded until something she said waked me up from a brown study.

”He really _is_ a nice boy,” she was saying, ”and after all, it's a tribute to your distinguished qualities that he should be afraid to speak to you.”

I guessed at once that she must have been talking of her nephew.

”What is he afraid to say to me?” I enquired.

”Afraid to ask you for Miss Lethbridge,” she explained.

I think just about that time an ugly black eyelid shut down over the moon. Anyhow, the world darkened for me.

”Isn't it rather old-fas.h.i.+oned, in these rapid days, for a young man to ask a guardian's permission to make love to his ward?” said I, savage as a chained dog.

She laughed. ”Oh, he hasn't waited for that to make love, I'm afraid,”

she returned. ”But he's afraid she won't accept him without your consent.”

”He seems to be afraid of several things,” I growled. ”Afraid to speak to me--afraid to speak to her.”

”He is young, and love has made him modest,” Mrs. Senter excused her favourite. ”He knows he isn't a _grand parti_. But if they care for each other?”

”I have seen no reason to believe that she cares for him,” said I, thinking myself (more or less) safe in the recollection of Ellaline's words at Winchester. I told you about them, I think.

”Ah, well,” said Mrs. Senter, ”she cares enough, anyhow, to have entered into a pact of some sort with the poor boy--a kind of understanding that, if _you_ approve, she may at least _think_ of being engaged to him in the future.”

”You are sure she has done that?” I asked, staggered by this statement, which I was far from expecting.

”Quite sure, unless love (in the form of d.i.c.k) is deaf as well as blind.

He certainly flatters himself that they are on these terms.”

”Since when?” I persisted. (By the by, I wonder if the inquisitors ever hit on the ingenious plan of making prisoners torture themselves?

Nothing hurts worse than self-torture.)

”Only since Lulworth Cove, or you would have heard of it before. You know when we came back from our walk, and saw them sitting on the beach together, I said what a pretty picture they made?”

Naturally, I remembered extremely well.

”That was when they had their great scene. d.i.c.k begged me, as an old friend of yours, to say a word when I found the chance. And I confess, I've _made_ the chance to-night. I do hope you won't think me impertinent and interfering? I'm fond of d.i.c.k. He's about all I have to be fond of in the world. And besides--just because I've never been happy myself, I want others to be, while they're young, not to waste time.”

I muttered something, I hardly know what, and she went on to talk to me of her past, for the first time. Said she had married when little more than a child, and had made the mistake of marrying a man she thought she could manage to live happily with, instead of one she couldn't manage to live happily without. That was all; but it had made _all_ the difference--and if Miss Lethbridge had given her first love to d.i.c.k----

I nearly said, ”Hang first love!” but I held my tongue, fortunately, for of course she meant well, and was only doing her best for her nephew.

But how anyone could love that fellow pa.s.ses my understanding! Why, it seems to me the creature's parents could hardly have loved him, unless he had had something of the monstrous hypnotism, as well as the selfishness, of a young cuckoo in its stolen nest. Yet the same hypnotism may influence birds outside the nest, I suppose. That's the only way to account for an infatuation on the part of Ellaline.

”If you are angry, d.i.c.k and I must go away,” Mrs. Senter went on. ”But he couldn't help falling in love, and to me they seem made for each other.”

I had to answer that of course I wasn't angry, but I thought any talk of love premature, to say the least.