Part 76 (1/2)

”You ought not to tire yourself,” he said with a difficult tenderness.

”I _am_ so fond of dancing,” pleaded Mrs. Peagrim. Recovering some of her breath, she gazed at her companion with a sort of short-winded archness. ”You are always so sympathetic, Major Selby.”

”Am I?” said Uncle Chris. ”Am I?”

”You know you are!”

Uncle Chris swallowed quickly.

”I wonder if you have ever wondered,” he began, and stopped. He felt that he was not putting it as well as he might. ”I wonder if it has ever struck you that there's a reason.” He stopped again. He seemed to remember reading something like that in an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a magazine, and he did not want to talk like an advertis.e.m.e.nt. ”I wonder if it has ever struck you, Mrs. Peagrim,” he began again, ”that any sympathy on my part might be due to some deeper emotion which.... Have you never suspected that you have never suspected....” Uncle Chris began to feel that he must brace himself up. Usually a man of fluent speech, he was not at his best to-night. He was just about to try again, when he caught his hostess' eye, and the soft gleam in it sent him cowering back into the silence as if he were taking cover from an enemy's shrapnel.

Mrs. Peagrim touched him on the arm.

”You were saying...?” she murmured encouragingly.

Uncle Chris shut his eyes. His fingers pressed desperately into the velvet curtain beside him. He felt as he had felt when a raw lieutenant in India, during his first hill-campaign, when the etiquette of the service had compelled him to rise and walk up and down in front of his men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets.

He seemed to hear the d.a.m.ned things _whop-whopping_ now ... and almost wished that he could really hear them. One or two good bullets just now would be a welcome diversion.

”Yes?” said Mrs. Peagrim.--

”Have you never felt,” babbled Uncle Chris, ”that, feeling as I feel, I might have felt ... that is to say might be feeling a feeling...?”

There was a tap at the door of the box. Uncle Chris started violently.

Jill came in.

”Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said. ”I wanted to speak....”

”You wanted to speak to me?” said Uncle Chris, bounding up.

”Certainly, certainly, certainly, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment?”

Mrs. Peagrim bowed coldly. The interruption had annoyed her. She had no notion who Jill was, and she resented the intrusion at this particular juncture intensely. Not so Uncle Chris, who skipped out into the pa.s.sage like a young lamb.

”Am I in time?” asked Jill in a whisper.

”In time?”

”You know what I mean. Uncle Chris, listen to me! You are not to propose to that awful woman. Do you understand?”

Uncle Chris shook his head.

”The die is cast!”

”The die isn't anything of the sort,” said Jill. ”Unless....” She stopped, aghast. ”You don't mean that you have done it already?”

”Well, no. To be perfectly accurate, no. But....”

”Then that's all right. I know why you were doing it, and it was very sweet of you, but you mustn't.”

”But, Jill, you don't understand.”