Part 61 (1/2)
”Oh, it is not that I am tired of your society,” poor Maurice put in eagerly.
”If I were a man,” his hostess went on, ”I never would let a woman see that I minded how she treated me. You'd soon have her coming down from her high horse if you showed her that you didn't care.”
Maurice flushed painfully. It was impossible for him to talk to Mrs.
Wilson about his feeling for Berenice.
”I am afraid that I had better go,” he said, with eyes abased.
She regarded him with a mixture of impatience and amus.e.m.e.nt struggling in her face.
”By all means go,” she retorted. ”I'll tell Patrick to be at the door in time to take you to the three o'clock train.”
She swept away rather brusquely, leaving him disconsolate and uneasy.
He felt that he had bungled matters; but before he had time to consider Berenice appeared, and joined him on the piazza.
”I am sent by Mrs. Wilson,” she announced, ”to ask you to stay.”
”You take some pains to clear yourself from the suspicion of having any interest in the matter.”
”'I am only a messenger,'” she quoted saucily, seating herself on the rail of the piazza in the suns.h.i.+ne, and looking so piquant that Maurice felt resolution and resentment oozing out of his mind with fatal rapidity.
He flushed at her allusion to his ill-considered interview with her, but he could not for his life be half so indignant as he wished to be.
”Apparently an indifferent messenger. You evidently do not care whether I go or I stay.”
”Why should I?”
”Why should Mrs. Wilson?” he retorted, not very well knowing what he was saying.
”Oh, Mrs. Wilson is your hostess. Besides,” Bee went on, a delightful look of mischief coming into her face, ”she said that she hated to have her plans interfered with, and that you were so handsome that she liked to have you about.”
Maurice flushed with a strangely mixed sensation of pleased vanity and irritation, and was angry with himself that he could not receive her jesting unmoved. He bowed stiffly.
”I am very sorry,” he returned, ”that Mrs. Wilson should be deprived of so beautiful an ornament for her place.”
”Then you will go?” Bee demanded, looking at him with mirthful eyes, a glance which so moved him that he could not face it.
”I see no reason why I should remain.”
”There certainly can be none if you see none. Well, I want to give you something of yours before you leave us.”
She drew from the folds of her handkerchief the little grotesque mask which she had pinned upon her lover's ca.s.sock at the Mardi Gras ball.
Maurice flushed hotly at the sight.
”You are determined, Miss Morison, to spare me no humiliation in your power.”
”Humiliation?” she echoed. ”Why, I was humiliating myself. Seriously, Mr. Wynne, I have been ashamed of that performance ever since; and I most sincerely beg your pardon. The humiliation is mine entirely.”