Part 15 (2/2)

Harry laughed, but he was stung; she put him on his mettle. ”Oh no, I understood your emphasis.”

”You needn't keep her waiting any longer--while you talk about nothing to me. You'll find her in the west wood--if you want to. She left you that message.”

Harry had no doubt of what she meant, yet she had not spoken a word of it. The saying goes that words are given us to conceal our thoughts; has anybody ever ventured to say that lips and eyes are? Her meaning carried without speech; understanding it, Harry took fire.

”I won't be late again, Miss Vintry,” he said. ”It would be a pity to disappoint Meriton in its ideal!”

He would have liked to speak to her for a moment sincerely, to ask her if she really thought--But no, it could not be risked. She would make him feel and look ridiculous. Asking her opinion about the right moment to--to--to come up to the scratch (he could find no more dignified phrase)! Her eyes would never let him hear the end of that.

”Still lingering?” she said, stifling a yawn. ”While poor Vivien waits!”

There are unregenerate atavistic impulses; Harry would dearly have liked to box her ears. ”Meriton's ideal” rankled horribly. What business was it of hers? It could not concern her in the least--a conclusion which made matters worse, since disinterested criticism is much the more formidable.

”I can find her in a few minutes.”

”Oh yes, if you look! Shall you be back to tea?”

”Yes, we'll be back to tea, Miss Vintry. Both of us--together!”

Isobel smiled lazily again. ”Come, you are going to make an effort.

Nothing of the laggard now!”

”Oh, that's the word you've been thinking suits me?”

”It really will if you don't get to the west wood soon.”

”I'll get there--and be back--in half an hour.”

The one thing he could not endure was that any woman--above all, an attractive woman--should find in him, Harry Belfield, anything that was ridiculous. She might chide, she might admire; laugh she must not, or her laugh should straightway be confounded. Isobel's hint that he had been a laggard in love banished, in a moment, the uncongenial prudence which he had been enforcing on himself.

She watched him with a contemptuous smile as he strode off on his quest.

Why had she mocked, why had she hinted? In part for pure mockery's sake.

She found a malicious pleasure in giving his complacency a dig, in shaking up his settled good opinion of himself. In part from sheer impatience of the simple obvious love affair, to which she was called by her situation to play witness, chaperon, and practically accomplice. It was quite clear how it was going to end--better have the end at once!

Her smile of contempt had been not so much for Harry as for the business on which he was engaged; yet Harry had his share of it, since her veiled banter had such power to move him. But that same thing in him had its fascination; there was a great temptation to exercise her power when the man succ.u.mbed to it so easily. In this case she had used it only to send him a little faster whither he was going already; but did that touch the limits of it?

So she speculated within herself, yet not quite candidly. Her feeling for Harry was far from being all contempt. She mocked him with her ”Meriton ideal,” but she was not independent of the Meriton standard herself. To her as to the rest of his neighbours he was a bright star; to her as to them his looks, his charm, his accomplishments appealed. In her more than in most of them his emotions, so ready and quick to take fire, found a counterpart. To her more than to most of them indifference from him seemed in some sort a slight, a slur, a mark of failure.

Unconsciously she had fallen into the Meriton way of thinking that notice from Harry Belfield was a distinction, his favour a thing marking off the recipient from less happy mortals. She had received little notice and little favour--a crumb or two of flirtation, flung from Vivien's rich table!

To Vivien, after all the person most intimately concerned, Harry had seemed no laggard; she would have liked him none the worse if he had shown more of that quality. Nothing that he did could be wrong, but some things could be--and were--alarming. Her fastidiousness was not hurt, but her timidity was aroused. She feared crises, important moments, the crossing of Rubicons, even when the prospect looked fair and delightful on the other side of the stream.

To-day, in the west wood, the crossing had to be made. It by no means follows that the man who falls in love lightly makes love lightly; he is as much possessed by the feeling he has come by so easily as though it were the one pa.s.sion of a lifetime. In his short walk from Isobel Vintry's side to Vivien's, Harry's feelings had found full time to rise to boiling-point. Isobel was far out of his mind; already it seemed to him inconceivable that he should not, all along, have meant to make his proposal--to declare his love--to-day. How could he have thought to hold it in for an hour longer?

”I know I was late, Vivien,” he said. ”I'm so sorry. But--well, I half believe I was on purpose.” He was hardly saying what was untrue; he was coming to half-believe it--or very nearly.

”On purpose! O Harry! Didn't you want to give me my lesson to-day?”

<script>