Part 28 (1/2)

”How shouldn't you? Why it is of you,--_you_!” with quite a delicious little laugh. ”So you will have to dance round after me all day for the future until your mission is fulfilled, and try to look as if you _really_ loved me.”

”You have mistaken your man,” says Ronayne, quietly: ”you must get some one else to help you in this matter. It is not for me, even if I did not love you; I should scorn so low a task.”

”Love is an idle word,” she says, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

”It may be--to some. But I tell you no man's heart is of so poor value that it can be flung hither and thither at any one's pleasure,--no, not even at the pleasure of the woman he adores. You will seek some more complaisant lover to be your dupe on this occasion. I decline the office.”

”You forget how you speak, sir!” she says, proudly; yet even as she gives way to this angry speech a gleam of deepest admiration so lights her eyes that she is obliged to let her lids fall over them to cover the tell-tales beneath; her breath comes and goes quickly.

Something like relief comes to her when Lord Rossmoyne, stretching his long neck round the curtain that half s.h.i.+elds the cus.h.i.+oned recess of the window where they are sitting, says, with considerable animation, for him,--

”Ah! so I have found you, Mrs. Bohun.”

”You have indeed, and in good time. I am pining in prison, but you have come to deliver me.”

”If I may.”

”Such a dreary little spot, is it not? I don't know what could have induced me to enter it.”

”Ronayne possibly,” says Rossmoyne, with an unpleasant smile.

”Oh, dear, no!” contemptuously: ”I came here of my own free will. We all do foolish things at times, I have not danced this last because Mr.

Ronayne prefers pleasant converse. I don't. I thought you would never come to seek me. What were you doing?”

”Hunting for you, and thinking every minute an hour. These curtains”--touching them--”were jealous of you, and sought to hide you.”

”Well, don't be so long next time,” she says, looking up at him with a smile that a little more pressure would make tender and laying her hand on his arm.

She moves away. Ronayne, drawing his breath somewhat savagely, sits down on the sill of the window and gazes blankly into the barrack-yard below.

He has still her programme in his hand, and is crumpling it unconscionably, hardly knowing what he does. But, if disturbed in mind, it is always _such_ a comfort to smash something, be it a piece of pasteboard or one's most intimate friend.

She had forgotten her card, probably, and now it is almost useless.

Ronayne's heart is full of bitterness, and he tries to swear to himself that for the future he will cleanse his heart of this coquette, who cares no more for him--nay, far less--than she does for her little toy terrier. Yet, even as these stern resolves seek vainly to root themselves in his breast, his eyes turn again to the room beyond, and make search for the siren who is his undoing. She is still, of course, with Rossmoyne, and is all smiles and pretty blushes, and is evidently both content and happy.

”I am a fool!--a madman!” he says to himself; and even as he says it his eyes light on Owen Kelly, who by chance is looking at him too.

Crossing the room, the latter (as though drawn by the melancholy eyes that have met his) soon reaches the window where Ronayne stands disconsolate.

”Why so pale and wan, fond lover?” he says gayly, but with so kindly an intonation that even the most pugnacious could not take umbrage at it.

Now, Mr. Kelly's knowledge on all matters is so clear and precise that Ronayne does not dream of deceiving him in this matter.

”Of course you will laugh at me,” he says, ”but somehow I don't mind _your_ ridicule much. It means only this, that I have just found out that she cares nothing at all for me.”

”_She_, being Mrs. Bohun? Well, my dear lad, if an elderly gentleman's experience is of any use to you, you may have it cheap. _I_ believe she cares a great deal for you. Lookers-on see most of the game, and I would back you against Rossmoyne any day.”

”You are a very good fellow,” says Ulic Ronayne, ”the best I know; but I understand you. You are only saying that to console me.”

”I am not, in faith: I say it because I think it.”