Part 39 (1/2)

”You can't mean it,” she exclaimed, forgetting to be circ.u.mspect. ”You couldn't possibly think seriously of marrying Doris Hayward?”

Instantly he stiffened.

”I don't know why you speak of it in that way. Certainly I am serious.

It is hardly a question I should joke about.”

There was a tense silence, then Hal turned to the sofa and picked up her hat as if she were a little dazed. She seemed suddenly to have nothing to say, and she knew herself to be no good at prevarication.

To congratulate him seemed an impossibility just yet.

”Of course I know you have never cared for Doris,” he said; ”but probably you did not know her well enough. I hope you will soon see you have misjudged her.”

”I hope so,” she said lamely. ”Good-night - I - I - hadn't thought about your getting married. I must get used to the idea. I - ” she paused in sudden, swift distress. ”Good-night; of course I hope you'll be happy, and all that,” and she went hurriedly out, and up to her own room.

CHAPTER XXI

When Hal reached her room she sat down on the bed in the dark, and stared at the dim square of the window. She was feeling stunned, and as if her brain would not work properly. It grasped the significance of old, familiar objects as usual, but seemed quite unable to grip and understand the something strange and new which had suddenly come into being. She remembered she had waited for Dudley to come with soothing for a perturbed frame of mind, and instead, he had brought her - _this_.

What could it mean? Surely, surely, not that Doris Hayward was to rob her of her brother.

A wave of swift and sudden loneliness seemed to envelop her. The blackness of the night closed in upon her, and desolation swept across her soul.

”If only it had been Ethel,” was the vague, uncertain thought: ”any one in the world almost but Doris.”

And again,

”Why had Dudley been so incredibly blind to Doris's real nature? Why had he of all men been caught by a pretty face? Was it possible he thought his life would need no other help and comfort but that of a charming exterior in his wife?”

How childlike he seemed again to his young sister's practical, worldly knowledge. Of course he knew almost nothing of women, buried in his musty old architectural lore, and giving most of his brain to the contemplation of ancient ruins and edifices.

He had looked up from his books, and Doris had smiled at him, that diabolically winsome, innocent smile of hers; and something in his heart, not quite smothered and likewise not healthily developed, had warmed into sudden, surprised pleasure, and straightway he thought himself in love. Hal was sure of one thingn, that if Doris had not decided it would suit her plans to be Dudley's wife, the idea would not have occured to him.

After all, what did he want with a wife for years to come, going along so contentedly and placidly with his books and his thirst for knowledge, and the peacefulness of their sojourn with Mrs. Carr? No servant troubles, no housekeeping worries, no taxes, no gas and electric-light bills; everything done for them, and for company each other.

Oh, of course, it was all Doris's doing. She wanted to get away from the dingy flat and the poverty, and she had hit upon Dudley as a way out.

Hal got up suddenly with a bursting feeling. Of course she did not even love him, would not even try to change her nature to become more in touch with his, would not trouble in the least what obstacles stood between any real and deep understanding. Perhaps she was not even capable of love, but in any case her affections could not have been given to any one as quiet, and studious, and old-fas.h.i.+oned as Dudley.

She went to the window and threw it open that she might lean out and breathe the open air. Her head burned and ached, and her eyes smarted with a smouldering fire in her brain. She felt more and more how entirely it must have been Doris's doing. Doris had smiled at him, and confided in him, and managed first to convey a pathetic picture of her own loneliness, and then to suggest how happy her life might be with him.

And of course Dudley was all chivalry at heart, and trusting, and tender-hearted; that was one reason why he had always deplored her, Hal's, boyish independence and determination to fend for herself. He did not understand the vigorous, enterprising, working woman.

Immersed in his books and his studies, he had allowed himself to be influenced largely by caricatures, and by the noisy stir of the platform woman. But he understood the Doris type, or thought he did, and placed their engaging dependence before such spirited resolution as her own and Ethel's.

And how to help him? How, now, to thwart the carrying out of Doris'

cleverly carried scheme.