Part 12 (1/2)

”What's the matter with you?” he said, at last.

”I'm wondering,” said Daphne slowly, ”how many more cousins and great friends you have, that I know nothing about. I think another time it would be civil--just that!--to give me a word of warning.”

Roger pulled at his moustache. ”I hadn't an idea she was within a thousand miles of this place! But, if I had, I couldn't have imagined she would have the face to come here!”

”Who is she?” With a sudden movement Daphne turned her eyes upon him.

”Well, there's no good making any bones about it,” said the man, flus.h.i.+ng. ”She's a girl I was once engaged to, for a very short time,”

he added hastily. ”It was the week before my father died, and our smash came. As soon as it came she threw me over.”

Daphne's intense gaze, under the slightly frowning brows, disquieted him.

”How long were you engaged to her?”

”Three weeks.”

”Had she been staying here before that?”

”Yes--she often stayed here. Daphne! don't look like that! She treated me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence about her.”

”You did care about her when you proposed to me?”

”No!--not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore, because she had thrown me over.”

”And I”--Daphne made a scornful lip--”was the feather-bed to catch you as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable to tell me?”

”Well, I don't know--I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!”

Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward laugh.

”I told you everything!” was the quick reply--”_everything_.”

Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions.

He had not been enough in love with her--then--to find them of any great account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically forgotten it--and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for the first time, without being ”a bit upset”; mostly, indeed, by the boldness--the brazenness--of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child.

So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's att.i.tude distressed him.

Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the deuce.

”Look here, dear!” he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his wife--”don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought.

I forgot her, dear--bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!”

But Daphne still held him at bay.

”How long were you engaged to her?” she repeated.

”I've told you--three weeks!” said the man, reluctantly.

”How long had you known her?”