Part 24 (1/2)

You don't know what you are saying. Come, there are all those things you have got to tell me. I want to hear everything, please; whom you have been flirting with, and all sorts of things. Now, it is no use your pretending that you are going to hide anything from me, because you know you can't!”

He had resumed his former manner with a rather conscious effort, and drew her down beside him on the sofa. She tried to obey him, but she could think of very little to say; and towards ten o'clock, Paul looked at his watch.

”My child, you must go,” he said. Katharine rose to her feet with a sigh.

”I don't want to go,” she said, reluctantly.

”Has it been nice, then?” he asked, smiling at her dejected face.

”It has been the happiest evening I have ever spent,” she said, looking away from him.

”Surely not!” laughed Paul. ”Think of all the other evenings at the theatre, with Ted and Monty and all the rest of them!”

”You know quite well,” she said indignantly, ”that I like being with you better than with any one else in the world. You know I do, don't you?” she repeated, anxiously.

”It is enough for me that you say so,” replied Paul; and they stood silent for a moment or two. ”Come, you really must go, child,” he said again. Katharine still remained motionless, while he put on his coat.

”Must I?” she said, dreamily. He came back to her and gave her a gentle shake.

”What is it, you strange little person? I believe you would have been much happier if I had not come back to bother you, eh?”

She denied it vehemently, and exerted herself to talk to him all the way home in the cab. She was solemn again, however, when the time came to say good-bye.

”May I see you again soon?” she asked him wistfully.

”Why, surely! We are going to have lots of larks together, aren't we?

Well, what is it now?”

”Oh, I was only thinking!”

”What about?”

She unlocked the door with her latch-key before she replied.

”It seems so odd,” she said, ”that I care more about your opinion than about anybody else's in the whole world; and yet I have given you the most reason to think badly of me. Isn't it awfully queer?”

She shut the door before he had time to answer her. And Paul walked home, reflecting on the futility of experiments.

CHAPTER XIV

The Sunday afternoon on which the Honourable Mrs. Keeley gave her first reception, that season, was a singularly dull and sultry one.

The room was filled with celebrities and their satellites; and Katharine's head was aching badly, as she struggled with difficulty through the crowd and managed to squeeze herself into a corner by the open window. She was always affected by the weather; and to-day, she felt unusually depressed by the absence of suns.h.i.+ne. A voice from the balcony uttered her name, and she turned round with a sigh, to be met by the complacent features of Laurence Heaton. For a moment she did not recognise him; and then, the sound of his voice carried her back to Ivingdon, and she smiled back at him for the sake of the a.s.sociations he brought to her mind.

”Is it really two years?” he was saying. ”Seems impossible when I look at your face, Miss Austen. Two years! And what have you been doing with yourself all this time, eh? And how do you contrive to look so fresh on a day like this? I am quite charmed to have this opportunity of renewing so pleasant an acquaintance.”

He forgot that, when he had known her before, she had annoyed him by not being in his style. And Katharine answered him vaguely, while her eyes wandered over the crowd of faces; for Paul had told her he was going to be there, and she felt restless.

”Small place the world is, to be sure,” continued Heaton, with the air of a man who says something that has not been said before. ”Who would have expected you to turn up at my old friends', the Keeleys'? Most curious coincidence, I must say!” Katharine, who knew of his very recent introduction to the house, explained her own relations.h.i.+p demurely. But her companion was quite unabashed, and changed the conversation skilfully.

”Wilton often comes here, he tells me. You remember Wilton, don't you?