Part 6 (1/2)

'I am not your pretty Peg; and I have told you several times that I will not be called ”Peg.”'

'_Peggy_, then. Personally, I prefer _Peg_; but it is a matter of opinion. Peggy, are you aware that you have been poaching?'

'I do not know what you mean.' But she does.

'Her ladys.h.i.+p did not much like it, I can tell you,' continues he delightedly. 'She manifested distinct signs of uneasiness. I could not keep her quiet, though I went through all my little tricks for her. She _would_ make those ridiculous noises; and she whipped him off pretty quickly, did not she? Ah, Peggy'--tenderly--'you would have done better to have kept to me! _I_ would not have left you in the lurch.'

To this she deigns no answer.

'Where is Prue?' asks he, a moment later, with an easy change of topic.

'What have you done with Prue?'

'I have done nothing with her,' rather sadly.

'You have sent her home with her nurse to bed, I suppose?' suggests he reproachfully. 'I sometimes think that you are a little hard upon Prue.'

_Hard upon Prue!_ She, whose one thought, waking and sleeping, is how best to put her strong arm round that fragile body and weakling soul, so as to s.h.i.+eld them from the knocks of this rough world! This, too, from him, who has introduced the one element of suffering it has ever known into Prue's little life.

'Am I?' she answers quietly; but her cheek burns.

'There is no one that suits me so well as Prue,' says the young man sentimentally, looking up to the sky.

'”She's like the keystone of an arch, That doth consummate beauty; She's like the music of a march, That maketh joy of duty!”'

Peggy's eye relents. He may mean it--may be speaking truth--it is not likely, as he seldom does so; but after all, the greatest liars must, during their lives, speak more truth than lies. One is p.r.o.ne to believe what one wishes, and he _may_ mean it.

'There is no one that I am so fond of as I am of Prue,' pursues he, with a quiver in his voice.

'You have an odd way of showing it sometimes,' says she, in a softened tone.

'Are you alluding to _that_?' asks he, glancing carelessly over his shoulder at the kiosk. 'Pooh! I hated it. I shall get milady to pull it down some day. I was so glad when you and Talbot came up: it was so dark, and I felt the earwigs dropping on my head.'

'Then why did you go there?' inquires she.

He bursts into a laugh, from which sentiment and quiver are miles away.

'The woman tempted me; at least' (seeing his companion's mouth taking a contemptuous upward curve at this mode of expression)--'at least, she seemed to expect it. I always like to do what people seem to expect.'

And Margaret's heart sinks.

CHAPTER V

'To one that has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to gaze upon the fair And open face of heaven--to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.'

It is the next day. John Talbot has spent a very happy morning. He is a countryman at heart. Fate has put him into the Foreign Office, and made him a great man's secretary, and tied him by the leg to London for ten months out of the twelve; but the country, whose b.u.t.tercups brightened his childhood, keeps his heart--the country, with its little larks upsoaring from its brown furrows; with its green and its russet gowns; with its good, sweet, innocent noises, and its heavenly smells. He has been lying on the flat of his back on the sward, with his hands under his head, staring in luxurious idleness up at the sky, and listening to the robin's song--in August scarcely anybody but the redbreast sings--and to the pleasant swish of the wind among the lime-tops. Lying there alone on the flat of his back--that is to say, at first.

Afterwards he has plenty of company. Not, indeed, that either his host or his fellow-guests trouble him much. From the lair he has chosen he has a view of his lady's window. It is true that he looks but seldom towards it, nor do its carefully closed cas.e.m.e.nts and drawn curtains hold out much hope of a descent of the sleeping G.o.ddess within. Lady Roupell lets it be understood that she does not wish to be seen or spoken to till luncheon; and the rest are dispersed, he neither knows nor cares whither. And yet he has companions. They are in the act of being escorted out to walk by their nurses when they catch sight of him.