Part 56 (2/2)
She was silent for a minute. The colour glowed brighter on her cheeks.
”I don't care to hear you say that,” she told him, daintily haughty. ”I was waiting here to congratulate you--yes, I hoped you'd come. I've nothing to do with anybody except the best candidate! They say you're that. I had my good wishes ready for you. Will you take them--without reserve?”
”I--I say things wrong,” pleaded poor Andy. ”I'll take anything you'll give.”
Her face flashed into a smile. ”Your wrong things are--well, one can forgive them. It's all settled then--and you're to be the M.P.?”
Andy was still apologetic. ”They know what to do, I suppose. It seems curious. Wigram says it's a certainty too. They've all joined in to help--Lord Meriton, Mr. Belfield, and old Jack. I'm much too poor by myself, you know.”
”The man who makes friends makes riches.” She gave a light laugh. ”May I be a little bit of your riches?”
Andy's answer was his own. ”Well, I always remember that morning--the hunt and Curly.”
”I'm still that to you?” she asked quickly, her colour rising yet.
He looked at her. ”No, of course not, but I had a sort of idea that then you liked me a bit.”
She looked across the room at him--Andy was a man who kept his distance.
”You've been a refuge in time of trouble,” she said. Her voice was soft, her eyes bright. ”We won't talk of the old things any more, will we?”
Wellgood stood in the window. ”Well, is it all right?” he asked.
”He's said yes, father!” she cried with a glad merriment.
”I thought he would. It's a change for the better!”
His blunt words--in truth they were brutal according to his brutality--brought silence. Andy flushed into a painful red--not for his own sake only.
”I've got to try to be as good a stop-gap as I can,” he said.
”Something better than that!” Vivien murmured softly.
Chapter XXIV.
PRETTY MUCH THE SAME!
In the spring of the following year Miss Doris Flower returned from an extensive professional tour in America. She had enjoyed great success.
The Nun and the Quaker proved thoroughly to the taste of transatlantic audiences; Joan of Arc did not at first create the same enthusiasm in the United States as she had in London, the allusion to the happier relations between France and England naturally not exciting quite equal interest. However an ingenious gentleman supplied the Maid with a vision of General Lafayette instead; though not quite so up-to-date, it more than answered expectations. Across the Canadian border-line the original vision was, of course, restored, and went immensely. It was all one to Miss Flower what visions she had, so that they were to the liking of the public. She came back much pleased with herself, distinctly affluent, and minded to enjoy for awhile a well-earned leisure. Miss Sally Dutton returned with her, charged with a wealth of comment on American ways and inst.i.tutions, the great bulk of which sensible people could attribute only to the blackest prejudice.
The lapse of six months is potent to smooth small causes of awkwardness and to make little changes of feeling or of att.i.tude seem quite natural.
Billy Foot had undoubtedly avoided the Nun for the last few weeks before her departure; he saw no reason now why he should not be among the earliest to call and welcome his old friend. It was rather with a humorous twinkle than with any embarra.s.sment that, when they settled down to talk, he asked her if she happened to know the Macquart-Smiths.
”Of Kensington?” asked the Nun in a tone of polite interest.
”Yes, Kensington Palace Gardens,” Billy replied, tranquilly unconscious of any other than the obvious bearing of the question. ”I thought you must have heard of them.” (The Nun never had, though she had seen at least one of them.) ”The old man made a pile out in Mexico. They're very good sort of people.”
”You brought one of the girls to hear me one night, didn't you?”
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