'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever too.'
'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'
'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly. She felt a little spiteful—not against Dolores; at least, not against Dolores on Dolores' own account—but against her as having been praised by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and cleverness of Miss Paulo.
'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'
'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.
'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay them a visit when this act is over.'
'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.
'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.
'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take charge of you, I will pay my visit.'
'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair, 'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'
'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.
Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under it—she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.
'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert asked—who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an opera-glass.
'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was able to tell him.
'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'
'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.
'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'
'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.
In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton. She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social rank who had actually wanted to marryher, making love soon after to the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly, and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably part of the chivalry of his nature—and the chivalry of his training under the Dictator—to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree? The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.
When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to Ericson:
'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores—what a pretty name!'
'She is a very clever girl,' he began.
'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'
'No, no; not in the least.'
'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again, and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means to say: 'You and I know something of what happened beforethat.'
Ericson smiled, a grave smile.
'He has to see her now and again,' he said.
'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'
'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'
'Are men ever lonely?'
'Very lonely sometimes.'
'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look at Mr. Hamilton—how happyheseems!'
'Hamilton's love foryouwas deep and sincere,' the Dictator said, with an almost frowning earnestness.
'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See! Look there!'
Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to an end.
Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse—generous impulse, surely, almost always—now found herself studying beforehand every word she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women—which would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman. Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was flirting with this, that, or the other man—and the curious thing is that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she found that she was in love—in love—in love, and with a man who did not seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt, therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and nervous all over—in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world—the world of London—even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say, 'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley—Sir Rupert's daughter—has fallen over head and ears in love with the Dictator, as they call him—that man who has come back from some South American place! Isn't it ridiculous?—and they say he doesn't care one little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know—he might do a great deal worse—she's a very clever girl,Ithink, and she will have lots of money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man isn't a foreigner—he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I thinkIshould be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age of man for a girl to marry; and really there are sofewmarrying men in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be choosers, don't you know?'
Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends, society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested in the marriages of girls who belong to its set—or in their subsequent divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person, and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say contentedly—perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married lives.
But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world—her world—were to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and commonplace sort of suffering after all—just what everybody has at one time or another, don't you know?
Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no—decidedly not. She had found her hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be parted from. She could followhisfortunes—she could openly be his friend—she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before, except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for others.
But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her inheritance—for her kingdom—the kingdom of human love which is the inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl, but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at the time.
Up in Hampstead the world seemed to wheel in its orbit more tranquilly than in the feverish city which lay at the foot of its slopes. There was something in its clear, its balsamic air, so cleanly free from the eternal smoke-clouds of London, that seemed to invite to a repose, to a leisurely movement in the procession of life. Captain Sarrasin once said that it reminded him of the pure air of the prairie, almost of the keen air of the cañons. Captain Sarrasin always professed that he found the illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains, suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead eyrie into the troubled city to seek out his restless brother. Hampstead was just the place for the folk-lore-loving Sarrasin. No doubt that, actually, human life is just the same in Hampstead as anywhere else, from Pekin to Peru, tossed by the same passions, driven onward by the same racking winds of desire, ambition, and despair. People love and hate and envy, feel mean or murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated lubber-land, affording to London the example of a kind of suburban Nirvana.
So while London was fretting in all its eddies, and fretting particularly for us in the eddy that swirled and circled around the fortunes of the Dictator, up in Hampstead, at Blarulf's Garth, and in the adjacent cottage which Mr. Sarrasin had named Camelot, life flowed on in a tranquil current. The Dictator often came up; whatever the claims, the demands upon him, he managed to dine one day in every week with Miss Ericson. Not the same day in every week indeed; the Dictator's life was inevitably too irregular for that; but always one day, whichever day he could snatch from the imperious pressure of the growing plans for his restoration, from the society which still regarded him as the most royal of royal lions, and, above all, from the society of the Langleys. However, it did not matter. One day was so like another up in Hampstead, that it really made no difference whether any particular event took place upon a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday; and Miss Ericson was so happy in seeing so much of her nephew after so long and blank an absence, that it would never have occurred to her to complain, if indeed complaining ever found much of a place in her gentle nature.
Whenever the Dictator came now, Mr. Sarrasin was always on hand, and always eager to converse with the wonderful nephew who had come back to London like an exiled king. To Mr. Sarrasin the event had a threefold interest. In the first place, the Dictator was the nephew of Miss Ericson. Had he been the most commonplace fellow that had ever set one foot before the other, there would have been something attractive about him to Sarrasin because of his kinship with his gentle neighbour. In the second place, he knew now that his brother, the brother whom he adored, had declared himself on the Dictator's side, and had joined the Dictator's party. In the third place, if no associations of friendship or kinship had linked him in any way with the fortunes of the Dictator, the mere fact of his eventful rule, of his stormy fortunes, of the rise and fall of such a stranger in such a strange land, would have fired all that was romantic, all that was adventurous, in the nature of the quiet, stay-at-home gentleman, and made him as eager a follower of the Dictator's career as if Ericson had been Jack with the Eleven Brothers, or the Boy who Could not Shiver. So Mr. Sarrasin spent the better part of six days in the week conversing with Miss Ericson about the Dictator; and on the day when Ericson came to Hampstead, Sarrasin was sure, sooner or later, to put in an appearance at Blarulf's Garth, and to beam in delighted approbation upon the exile of Gloria.
One day Mr. Sarrasin came into Miss Ericson's garden with a countenance that beamed with more than usual benignity. But the benignity was, as it were, blended with an air of unwonted wonder and exhilaration which consorted somewhat strangely with the wonted calm of the excellent gentleman's demeanour. He had a large letter in his hand, which he kept flourishing almost as wildly as if he were an enthusiastic spectator at a racecourse, or a passenger outward bound waving a last good-night to his native land.
It happened to be one of the days when the Dictator had come up from the strenuous London, and from playing his own strenuous part therein. He was sitting with Miss Ericson in the garden, as he had sat there on the first day of his return—that day which now seemed so long ago and so far away—almost as long ago and as far away as the old days in Gloria themselves. He was telling her all that had happened during the days that had elapsed since their last meeting. He spoke, as he always did now, much of the Langleys, and as he spoke of them Miss Ericson's grave, kind eyes watched his face closely, but seemed to read nothing in its unchanged composure. As they were in the middle of their confidential talk, the French windows of the little drawing-room opened, and Mr. Sarrasin made his appearance—a light-garmented vision of pleasurably excited good-humour.
'Whathashappened to our dear old friend?' Ericson asked the old lady as Sarrasin came beaming across the grass towards them, fluttering his letter. 'He seems to be quite excited.'
Miss Ericson laughed as she rose to greet her friend. 'You may be sure we shall not long be left in doubt,' she said, as she advanced with hands extended.
Mr. Sarrasin caught both her hands and pressed them warmly. 'I have such news,' he murmured, 'such wonderful news!' Then he turned his smiling face in the direction of the Dictator. 'Good-day, Mr. Ericson; wonderful news! And it concernsyoutoo, in a measure; only in a measure, indeed, but still in a measure.'
The Dictator's face expressed a smiling interest. He had really grown quite fond of this sweet-tempered, cheery, childlike old gentleman. Miss Ericson drew Sarrasin to a seat opposite to her own, and sat down again with an air of curiosity which suggested that she and her nephew were waiting for the wonderful news. As she had predicted, they had not long to wait. Mr. Sarrasin having plunged into the subject on the moment of his arrival, could think of nothing else.
'I have a letter here,' he said; 'sucha letter! Whom do you think it is from? Why, from no less a person than Professor Flick, who is, as of courseyouknow, the most famous authority on folk-lore in the whole of the West of America.'
Sarrasin paused and looked at them with an air of triumph. He evidently expected them to say something. So Ericson spoke.
'I am ashamed to say,' he confessed, 'that I have never heard the honoured name of Professor Flick before.'
Mr. Sarrasin looked a trifle dashed. 'I was in hopes you might have known,' he said, 'for his name and his books are of course well known to me. But no doubt you have had little time for such study. Anyhow, we shall soon know him personally, both you and I; you probably even sooner than I.'
'Indeed!' said Ericson. 'How am I to come to know him? I am not very strong on folk-lore.'
'Why?' answered Mr. Sarrasin. 'Because he is stopping in your hotel. This letter which I have received from him this morning is dated from Paulo's Hotel, the chosen home apparently of all illustrious persons.'
The Dictator smiled. 'I dare not claim equality with Professor Flick, and I fear I might not recognise him if I met him in the corridors, or on the stairs. I must inquire about him from Miss Paulo.'
'Do, do,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'But he will come here. Of course he will come here. He writes to me a most flattering letter, in which he does me the honour to say that he has read with pleasure my poor tractates on "The Survival of Solar Myths in Kitchen Customs," and on "The Probable Patagonian Origin of 'A Frog he would a-wooing go.'" He is pleased to express a great desire to make my acquaintance. I wonder if he has heard of my brother? Oisin must have been in Sacramento and Omaha and all the other places.'
'I should think he was sure to have met your brother,' said the Dictator, feeling he was expected to say something.
'If not, I must introduce my brother,' Mr. Sarrasin said joyously. 'Fancy anyone being introduced to anybody through me!'
Miss Ericson had listened quietly, with an air of smiling interest, while Mr. Sarrasin was giving forth his joyful news. Now she leaned forward and spoke.
'What do you propose to do in honour of this international episode?' she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely. Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute of the cheeriest laughter.
'That is excellent,' he said; 'International Episode is excellent. But, you see,' he went on, growing suddenly grave, 'it reallyissomething of an international affair after all. Here we have an eminent American scholar——'
'Who is naturally anxious to make the acquaintance of an eminent English scholar,' the Dictator suggested.
Mr. Sarrasin's large fair face flushed pink with pleasure.
'You are too good, Mr. Ericson, too good. But I feel that I must do something for our distinguished friend, especially as he has done me the honour to single me out for so gratifying a mark of his approval. I think that I shall ask him to dinner.' And Mr. Sarrasin looked thoughtfully at his audience to solicit their opinion.
'A very good idea,' said the Dictator. 'Nothing cements literary or political friendship like judicious dining. Dining has a folk-lore of its own.'
'But don't you think,' suggested Miss Ericson, 'that as this gentleman, Professor——'
'Flick,' prompted Mr. Sarrasin.
'Thank you; Professor Flick. That, as Professor Flick is a stranger, and a distinguished stranger, it is your duty, my dear Mr. Sarrasin, to call upon him at his hotel?'
Mr. Sarrasin bowed again. 'Thank you, Miss Ericson,thankyou. You always think of the right thing. Of course it is obviously my duty to pay my respects to Professor Flick at his hotel, which happens also to be our dear friend's hotel. And the sooner the better, I suppose.'
'The sooner the visit the stronger the compliment, of course,' said Miss Ericson.
'That decides me,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'I will go this very day.'
'Then let us go into town together,' the Dictator suggested. 'I must be getting back again.' For this was one of those days on which Ericson came out early to Blarulf's Garth and left after luncheon. The suggestion made Mr. Sarrasin beam more than ever.
'That will be delightful,' he said, with all the conviction of a schoolboy to whom an unexpected holiday has been promised.
'I have my cab outside,' the Dictator said. Ericson liked tearing round in hansom cabs, and could hardly ever be induced to make use of one of the hotel broughams.
So the two men took affectionate leave of Miss Ericson and passed together out of the gate. There were two cabs in sight—one waiting for Ericson, the other in front of Sarrasin's Camelot Cottage. Two men had got out of the cab, and were asking some questions of the servant at the door.
'These must be your friends of the Folk-Lore,' Ericson said.
'Why—God bless me—I suppose so! Never heard of such promptness. Will you excuse me a moment? Can you wait? Are you pressed for time? It may not be they, you know, after all.'
'Oh, yes, I'll wait; I am in no breathless hurry.'
Then Sarrasin went over and accosted the two men. Evidently they were the men he had guessed them to be, for there was much bowing and shaking of hands and apparently cordial and effusive talk. Then the whole trio advanced towards Ericson. He saw that one of the men was big, fair-haired, and large-bearded, and that he wore moony spectacles, which gave him something of the look of Mr. Pickwick grown tall. The other man was slim and closely shaven, except for a yellowish moustache. There was nothing very striking about either of them.
'Excellency,' the good Sarrasin said, in his courtliest and yet simplest tones, 'I ask permission to present to you two distinguished American scholars—Professor Flick of Denver and Sacramento, and Mr. Andrew J. Copping of Omaha. These gentlemen will be proud to have the honour of meeting the patriot Dictator of Gloria, whose fame is world-renowned.'
'Excellency,' said Professor Flick, 'I am proud to meet you.'
'Excellency,' said Mr. Andrew J. Copping, 'I am proud to meet you.'
'Gentlemen,' Ericson said, 'I am very glad to meet you both. I have been in your country—indeed, I have been all over it.'
'And yet it is a pretty big country, sir,' the Professor observed, with a good-natured smile, as that of a man who kindly calls attention to the fact that one has made himself responsible for rather a large order.
'It is, indeed,' Ericson assented, without thought of disputation; 'but I have been in most of its regions. My own interests, of course, are in South America, as you would know.'
'As we know now, sir,' the Professor replied, 'as we know now, Excellency. I am ashamed to say that we specialists have a way of getting absorbed right up in our own topics, and my friend and I know hardly anything of politics or foreign affairs. Why, Mr. Sarrasin,' and here the Professor suddenly turned to Sarrasin, as if he had something to say that would specially interest him above all other men, 'do you know, sir, that I sometimes fail to remember who is the existing President of the United States?'
'Well, I am sure,' said Sarrasin, 'I don't know at this moment the name of the present Lord Mayor of London.'
'And that is how I had known nothing about the career of your Excellency until quite lately,' the Professor blandly explained. 'I think it wrong, sir—a breach of truth, sir—that a man should pretend to any knowledge on any subject which he has not got. Of course, since I have been in Paulo's Hotel I have heard all about your record, and it is a pride and a privilege to me to make your acquaintance. And we need hardly say, sir, my friend and I, what a surprise it is to have the honour of making your acquaintanceship on the occasion of the first visit we have ventured to pay to the house of our distinguished friend Professor Sarrasin.'
'Not a professor,' said Sarrasin, with a mild disclaiming smile. 'I have no claim to any title of any kind.'
'Fame like yours, sir,' the Professor gravely said, 'requires no title. In our far-off West, among all true votaries of folk-lore, the name of Sarrasin is, sir—well, is a household word.'
'I am pleased to hear you say so,' the blushing Sarrasin murmured; 'I will frankly confess that I am delighted. But I own that I am greatly surprised.'
'Our folks when they take up a subject study it right through,' the Professor affirmed. 'Sir, we should not have sought you if we had not known of you. We knew of you, and we have sought you.'
There was no gainsaying this. Sarrasin could not ignore his fame.
'But you were going to the City, sir, with your illustrious friend.' An American hardly ever understands the Londoner's localisation of 'the City,' and when he speaks of a visit to Berkeley Square would call it going to the City. 'Please do not let us interrupt your doubtless highly important mission.'
'It was only a mission to call on you at Paulo's Hotel,' Sarrasin said; 'and his Excellency was kind enough to offer to drive me there. Now that you are here you have completed my mission for the moment. Shall we not go in?'
'I am afraid I must get back to town,' Ericson said.
'Surely—surely—our friends will quite understand how much your time is taken up.'
'Much of it taken up to very little profit of any kind,' Ericson said with a smile. 'But to-day I have some rather important things to look after. I am glad, however, that I did not set about looking after them too soon to see your American visitors, Mr. Sarrasin.'
'Just a moment,' Sarrasin eagerly said, stammering in the audacity of his venture. 'One part of my purpose in seeking out Professor Flick, and—Mr.—Mr. Andrew J. Copping—of Omaha—yes—I think I am right—of Omaha—was to ask these gentlemen if they would do me the favour of dining with me on the earliest day we can fix—not here, of course—oh, no—I could not think of bringing them out here again; but at the Folk-Lore Club, the only club, gentlemen, with which I have the honour to be connected——'
'Sir, you do us too much honour,' the Professor gravely said, 'and any day that suits you shall be made suitable to us.'
'Suitable to us,' Mr. Copping solemnly chimed in.
'And I was thinking,' Sarrasin said, turning to Ericson, who was now becoming rather eager to get away, 'that if we could prevail upon his Excellency to join us he might be interested in our quaint little club, to say nothing of an evening with two such distinguished American scholars, who, I am sure——'
'I shall be positively delighted,' Ericson said, 'if you can only persuade Hamilton to agree to the night and to let me off. Hamilton is my friend who acts as private secretary to me, Professor Flick; and, as I am informed you sometimes say in America, he bosses the show.'
'I believe, sir, that is a phrase common among the less educated of our great population,' Professor Flick conceded.
'Quite so,' said Ericson, beginning to think the Professor of Folk-Lore rather a prig.
'Then that is all but arranged,' Sarrasin said, flushing with joy and only at the moment having one regret—that the Folk-Lore Club did not take in ladies as guests, and that, therefore, there was no use in his thinking of asking Miss Ericson to join the company at his dinner party.
'Well, the basis of negotiation seems to have been very readily accepted on both sides,' Ericson said, with a feeling of genuine pleasure in his heart that he was in a position to do anything that could give Sarrasin a pleasure, and resolving within himself that on that point at least he would stand no nonsense from Hamilton.
So they all parted very good friends. Sarrasin and the two Americans disappeared into Camelot, and Ericson drove home alone. As he drove he was thinking over the Americans. What a perfect type they both were of the regulation American of English fiction and the English stage! If they could only go on to the London stage and speak exactly as they spoke in ordinary life they must make a splendid success as American comic actors. But, no doubt, as soon as either began to act, the naturalness of the accent and the manner and the mode of speech would all vanish and something purely artificial would come up instead. Still, he wondered how it came about that distinguished scholars, learned above all things in folk-lore—a knowledge that surely ought to bring something cosmopolitan with it—should be thus absolutely local, formal, and typical of the least interesting and least appreciative form of provincial character in America. 'It is really very curious,' he said to himself. 'They seem to me more like men acting a stiff and conventional American part than like real Americans. But, of course, I have never met much of that type of American.' He soon put the question away, and thought of other people than Professor Flick and Mr. Andrew J. Copping. He was interested in them, however—he could not tell why—and he was glad to have the chance of meeting them at dinner with dear old Sarrasin at the Folk-Lore Club; and he was wondering whether they would relax at all under the genial influence, and become a little less like type Americans cut out of wood and moved by clockwork, and speaking by mechanical contrivance. Ericson had a good deal of boyish interest in life, and even in small things, left in him, for all his Dictatorship and his projects, and his Gloria, and the growing sentiment that sometimes made him feel with a start and a pang that it was beginning to rival Gloria itself in its power of absorption.
Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a big property in any sense—a little park and a fine old mansion, half convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable—at least to the ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of sunshine. The Dictator was one of the party. So was Hamilton. So was Soame Rivers. So was Miss Paulo, on whose coming Helena had insisted with friendly pressure. Later on were to come Professor Flick, and his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, in whom Helena, at Ericson's suggestion, had been pleased to take some interest. So were Captain Sarrasin and his wife. Mr. Sarrasin, of Hampstead, had been cordially invited, but he found himself unable to venture on so much of a journey. He loved to travel far and wide while seated at his chimney corner or on a garden seat in the lawn in front of Miss Ericson's cottage, or of Camelot, his own.
The mind of the Dictator was disturbed—distressed—even distracted. He was expecting every day, almost every hour, some decisive news with regard to the state of Gloria. His feelings were kept on tenter-hooks about it. He had made every preparation for a speedy descent on the shores of his Republic. But he did not feel that the time was yet quite ripe. The crisis between Gloria and Orizaba seemed for the moment to be hanging fire, and he did not believe that any event in life could arouse the patriotic spirit of Gloria so thrillingly as the aggression of the greater Republic. But the controversy dragged on, a mere diplomatic correspondence as yet, and Ericson could not make out how much of it was sham and how much real. He knew, and Hamilton knew, that his great part must be acoup de théâtre, and although he despised politicalcoups de théâtrein themselves, he knew as a practical man that by means of such a process he could best get at the hearts of the population of Gloria. The moment he could see clearly that something serious was impending, that moment he and his companions would up steam and make for the shores of Gloria. But just now the dispute seemed somehow to be flickering out, and becoming a mere matter of formally interchanged despatches. Was that itself a stratagem, he thought—were the present rulers of Gloria waiting for a chance of quietly selling their Republic? Or had they found that such a base transaction was hopeless? and were they from whatever reason—even for their own personal safety—trying to get out of the dispute in some honourable way, and to maintain for whatever motive the political integrity and independence of Gloria? If such were the case, Ericson felt that he must give them their chance. Whatever might be his private and personal doubts and fears, he must not increase the complications and difficulties by actively intervening in the work. Therefore his mind was disturbed and distressed; and he watched with a sometimes sickening eagerness for every new edition of the papers, and was always on the look-out for telegrams either addressed to himself personally or fired at Sir Rupert in the Foreign Office.
He had other troubles too. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed about his own feelings to Helena Langley. He was beginning to feel, whenever he was away from her, that 'inseparable sigh for her,' which Byron in one of the most human of all his very human moods, has so touchingly described. He felt that she was far too young for him, and that the boat of his shaky fortunes was not meant to carry a bright and beautiful young woman in it—a boat that might go to pieces on a rock at any moment after it had tried to put to sea; and which must, nevertheless, try to put to sea. Then again he had been irritated by paragraphs in the society papers coupling his name more or less conjecturally with that of Helena Langley. 'All this must come to an end,' he thought. 'I have got my work to do, and I must go and do it.'
One evening Ericson wandered along outside the gates of the Park, and along the chalky roads that led by the sea-wall towards the little town. The place was lonely even at that season. The rush of Londoners had not yet found a way there. To 'Arry and 'Arriet it offered no manner of attraction. The sunset was already over, but there was still a light and glow in the sky. The Dictator looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter to seven—there was yet time enough, before returning to dress for the eight o'clock dinner. 'I must make up my mind,' he said to himself; 'I must go.'
He heard the rattle of wheels, and towards him came a light pony carriage with two horses, a footman sitting behind, and a young woman driving. It was Helena. She pulled up the moment she saw him.
'I have been down into the town,' she said.
'Seeing after your poor?'
'Oh—well—yes—I like seeing after them. It's no sacrifice on my part—I dare say I shouldn't do it if I didn't like it. Shall I drive you home?'
'It is early,' he said, hesitatingly; 'I thought of enjoying the evening a little yet.'
This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.
'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'
'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the town.
'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been doing a little shopping.'
'Shopping here! What on earth canyouwant to buy in this little place?'
'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'
'But what do you buy?'
'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'
'But the wine?'
'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out: "Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly, and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried all that off." NowIwas Sir Rupert.'
'Yes, I dare say you were. He never knew?'
'Oh, no; my dodges to make him popular would not interest him one little bit. He goes in for charity and all that, and doing real good to deserving poor; but he doesn't care a straw about popularity. NowIdo.'
'I don't believe you do in the least,' Ericson said, looking fixedly at her. Very handsome she showed, with the west wind blowing back her hair, and a certain gleam of excitement in her eyes, as if she were boldly talking of something to drive away all thought or possibility of talk about something else.
'Oh, not about myself, of course! But I want papa to be popular here and everywhere else. Do you know—it is very funny—the first day I came down here—this time—I went into one of the shops to give some orders, and the man, when he had written them down—he hadn't asked my name before—he said, "YouareSir Rupert Langley, ain't you, miss?" and I said, without ever thinking over the question, "Oh, yes, of course I am." It was all right. We each meant what we said, and we conveyed our ideas quite satisfactorily. He didn't fancy that "Miss" was passing off for her father, and I didn't suppose that he thought anything of the kind. So it was all right, but it was very amusing, I thought.'
She was talking against time, it would seem. At least she was probably not talking of what deeply interested her just then. In truth, she had stopped her carriage on a sudden impulse when she saw Ericson, and now she was beginning to think that she had acted too impulsively. Until lately she had allowed her impulses to carry her unquestioned whither they were pleased to go.
'I suppose we had better turn back,' she said.
'I suppose so,' the Dictator answered. They stood still before turning, and looked along the way from home.
The sky was all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in some places to the very tenderest tone of pink—a pink that suggested in a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn. Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself out against the sky.
'What is that little light—that spark?' she asked. 'Is it a star?'
'Oh, no,' the Dictator said gravely, 'it is only an ordinary gas-lamp—nothing more.'
'A gas-lamp? Oh, come, that is quite impossible. I mean that star, there in the sky.'
'It is only a gas-lamp all the same,' he said. 'You will see in a moment. It is on the brow of the road—probably the first gas-lamp on the way into the town. Against that clear sky, with its tender tones, the light in the street-lamp shows not orange or red, but a sparkling white.'
'Come nearer and let us see,' she said, impatiently. 'Come, by all means.'
So they went nearer, and the illusion was gone. It was, as he had said, a common street-lamp.
'I am quite disappointed,' Helena said, after a moment of silence.
'But why?' he asked. 'Might not one extract a moral out of that?'
'Oh, I don't see how you could.'
'Well, let us try. The common street-lamp got its opportunity, and it shone like a star. Isn't there a good deal of human life very like that?'
'But what is the good of showing for once like a star when it is not a star?'
'Ah, well, I am afraid a good deal of life's ambition would be baffled if everyone were to take that view of things.'
'But isn't it the right view?'
'To the higher sense, yes—but the ambition of most men is to be taken for the star, at all events.'
'That is, mistaken for the star,' she said.
'Yes, if you will—mistaken for the star.'
'I am sure that is not your ambition,' she said warmly. 'I am sure you would rather be the star mistaken at a distance by some stupid creature for a gas-lamp, than the gas-lamp mistaken even by me'—she spoke this smilingly—'for a star.'
'I should not like to be mistaken by you for anything,' he said.
'You know I could not mistake you.'
'I think you are mistaking me now—I am afraid so.
'Oh, no; please do not think anything like that. I never could mistake you—I always understand you. Tell me what you mean.'
'Well; you think me a man of courage, I dare say.'
'Of course I do. Everyone does.'
'Yet I feel rather cowardly at this moment.'
'Cowardly! About what?'
'About you,' he answered blankly.
'About me? Am I in any danger?'
'No, not in that sense.' He did not say in what sense.
She promptly asked him: 'In what sense then?'
'Well, then,' said the Dictator, 'there is something I ought to tell you, something disagreeable—I am sure it will be disagreeable, and I don't know how to tell it. I seem to want the courage.'
'Talk to me as if I were a man,' she said hotly.
'That would not mend matters, I am afraid.'
They were now walking back towards the Park.
'Call me Dick Langley,' she said, 'and talk to me as if I were a boy, and then perhaps you can tell me all you mean and all you want to do. I am tired of this perpetual difficulty.'
'It wouldn't help in the least,' the Dictator said, 'if I were to call you Dick Langley. You would still be Helena Langley.'
The girl, usually so fearless and unconstrained—so unconventional, those said who liked her—so reckless, they said who did not like her—this girl felt for the first time in her life the meaning of the conventional—the all-pervading meaning of the difference of sex. For the mere sound of her own name, 'Helena,' pronounced by Ericson, sent such a thrill of delight through her that it made her cheek flush. It did a great deal more than that—it made her feel that she could not long conceal her emotion towards the Dictator, could not long pretend that it was nothing more than that which the most enthusiastic devotee feels for a political leader. A shock of fear came over her, something compounded of exquisite pleasure and bewildering pain. That one word 'Helena,' spoken perhaps carelessly by the man who walked beside her, broke in upon her soul and sense with the awakening touch of a revelation. She awoke, and she knew that she must soon betray herself. She knew that never again could she have the careless freedom of heart which she owned but yesterday. She was afraid. She felt tears coming into her eyes. She stopped suddenly, and put her hand to her side and gasped as if for breath.
'What is the matter?' Ericson asked. 'Are you unwell?'
'No, no!' she said hastily. 'I felt just a little faintish for a moment—but it's nothing. I am not a bit of a fainting girl, Mr. Ericson, I can assure you—never fainted in all my life. I have the nerves of a bull-dog and the digestion of an ostrich.'
'You don't quite look like that now,' he said, in an almost compassionate tone. He was puzzled. Something had undoubtedly happened to make her start and pause like that. But he could only think of something physical; it never occurred to him to suppose that anything he had said could have caused it.
'Shall we go back to what we were talking about?' he asked.
'What we were talking about?' Already her new discovery had taken away some of her sincerity, and inspired her with the sense of a necessity for self-defence. Already, and for the first time in her life, she was having recourse to one of the commonest, and, surely, one of the least culpable, of the crafts and tricks of womanhood, she was trying not to betray her love to the man who, so far as she knew, had not thought of love for her.
'Well, you were accusing me of a want of frankness with you, and were urging me to be more open?'
'Was I? Yes, of course I was; but I don't suppose I meant anything in particular—and, then, I have no right.'
The Dictator grew more puzzled than ever.
'No right?' he asked. 'Yes—but I gave you the right when I told you I was proud of your friendship, and I asked you to tell me of anything you wanted to know. ButIwanted to speak toyouvery frankly too.'
She looked at him in surprise and a sort of alarm.
'Yes, I did. I want to tell you why I can't treat you as if you were Dick Langley. I want to tell you why I can't forget that you are Helena Langley.'
This time the sound of the name was absolutely sweet in her ears. The mere terror had gone already, and she would gladly have had him call her 'Helena,' 'Helena,' ever so many times over without the intermission of a moment. 'Only perhaps I should get used to it then, and I shouldn't feel it so much,' she thought, with a sudden correcting influence on a first passionate desire. She steadied her nerves and asked him:
'Why can you not speak to me as if I were Dick Langley, and why can you never forget that I am—Helena Langley?'
'Because you are Helena Langley for one thing, and not Dick,' he said with a smile. 'Because you are not a young man, but a very charming and beautiful young woman.'
'Oh!' she exclaimed, with an almost angry movement of her hand.
'I am not paying compliments,' he said gently. 'Between us let there be truth, as you said yourself in your quotation from Goethe the other day. I am setting out the facts before you. Even if I could forget that you are Helena Langley, there are others who could not forget it either for you or for me.'
'I don't understand what you mean,' she said wonderingly.
'You would not understand, of course. I am afraid I must explain to you. You will forgive me?'
'I have not the least idea,' she said impetuously, 'what I am to understand, or what I am to forgive. Mr. Ericson, do for pity's sake be plain with me.'
'I have resolved to be,' he said gloomily.
'What on earth has been happening? Why have you changed in this way to me?'
'I have not changed.'
'Well, tell me the whole story,' she said impatiently, 'if there is a story.'
'There is a story,' he said, with a melancholy smile, 'a very silly story—but still a story. Look here, Miss Langley: even if you do not know that you are beautiful and charming and noble-hearted and good—as I well know that you are all this and ever so much more—you must know that you are very rich.'
'Yes, I do know that, and I am glad of it sometimes, and I hate it sometimes. I don't know yet whether I am going to be glad of it or to hate it now. Go on, Mr. Ericson, please, and tell me what is to follow this prologue about my disputed charms and virtues—for I assure you there are many people, some women among the rest, who think me neither good-looking nor even good—and my undisputed riches.' She was plucking up a spirit now, and was much more like her usual self. She felt herself tied to the stake, and was determined to fight the course.
'Do you know,' he asked, 'that people say I am coming here after you?'
She blushed crimson, but quickly pulled herself together. She was equal to anything now.
'Is that all?' she asked carelessly. 'I should have thought they said a great deal more and a great deal worse than that.'
He looked at her in some surprise.
'What else do you suppose they could have said?'
'I fancied,' she answered with a laugh, 'that they were saying I went everywhere after you.'
'Come, come,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which the Dictator seemed almost as much bewildered as if she had thrown her fan in his face. 'You mustn't talk nonsense. I am speaking quite seriously.'
'So am I, I can assure you.'
'Well, well, to come to the point of what I had to say. People are talking, and they tell each other that I am coming after you, to marry you, for the sake of your money.'
'Oh!' She recoiled under the pain of these words. 'Oh, for shame,' she exclaimed, 'they cannot say that—of you—of you?'
'Yes, they do. They say that I am a mere broken-down and penniless political adventurer—that I am trying to recover my lost position in Gloria—which I am, and by God's good help I shall recover it too.'
'Yes, with God's good help you shall recover it,' the girl exclaimed fervently, and she put out her hand in a sudden impulse for him to take it in his. The Dictator smiled sadly and did not touch the proffered hand, and she let it fall, and felt chilled.
'Well, they say that I propose to make use of your money to start me on my political enterprise. They talked of this in private, the society papers talk of it now.'
'Well?' she asked, with a curious contracting of the eyebrows.
'Well, but that is painful—it is hurtful.'
'To you?'
'Oh, no,' he replied almost angrily, 'not to me. How could it be painful and hurtful to me? At least, what do you suppose I should care about it? What harm could it do me?'
'None whatever,' she calmly replied. She was now entirely mistress of herself and her feelings again. 'No one who knows you would believe anything of the kind—and for those who do not know you, you would say, "Let them believe what they will."'
'Yes, they might believe anything they liked so far as I am concerned,' he said scornfully. 'But then we must think ofyou. Good heaven!' he suddenly broke off, 'how the journalism of England—at all events of London—has changed since I used to be a Londoner! Fancy apparently respectable journals, edited, I suppose, by men who call themselves gentlemen—and who no doubt want to be received and regarded as gentlemen—publishing paragraphs to give to all the world conjectures about a young woman's fortune—a young woman whom they name, and about the adventurers who are pursuing her in the hope of getting her fortune.'
'You have been a long time out of London,' Helena said composedly. She was quite happy now. If this was all, she need not care. She was afraid at first that the Dictator meant to tell her that he was leaving England for ever. Of course, if he were going to rescue and recover Gloria, she would have felt proud and glad. At least she would certainly have felt proud, and she would have tried to make herself think that she felt glad, but it would have been a terrible shock to her to hear that he was going away; and, this shock being averted, she seemed to think no other trouble an affair of much account. Therefore, she was quite equal to any embarrassment coming out of what the society papers, or any other papers, or any persons whatever, might say about her. If she could have spoken out the full truth she would have said: 'Mr. Ericson, so long as my father and you are content with what I do, I don't care three rows of pins what all the rest of the world is saying or thinking of me.' But she could not quite venture to say this, and so she merely offered the qualifying remark about his having been a long time out of London.
'Yes, I have,' he said with some bitterness. 'I don't understand the new ways. In my time—you know I once wrote for newspapers myself, and very proud I was of it, too, and very proud I am of it—a man would have been kicked who dragged the name of a young woman into a paper coupled with conjectures as to the scoundrels who were running after her for her money.'
'You take it too seriously,' said Helena sweetly. She adored him for his generous anger, but she only wanted to bring him back to calmness. 'In London we are used to all that. Why, Mr. Ericson, I have been married in the newspapers over and over again—I mean I have been engaged to be married. I don't believe the wedding ceremonial has ever been described, but I have been engaged times out of mind. Why, I don't believe papa and I ever have gone abroad, since I came out, without some paragraph appearing in the society papers announcing my engagement to some foreign Duke or Count or Marquis. I have been engaged to men I never saw.'
'How does your father like that sort of thing?' the Dictator asked fiercely.
'My father? Oh, well, of course he doesn't quite like it.'
'I should think not,' Ericson growled—and he made a flourish of his cane as if he meant to illustrate the sort of action he should like to take with the publishers of these paragraphs, if he only knew them and had an opportunity of arguing out the case with them.
'But, then, I think he has got used to it; and of course as a public man he is helpless, and he can't resent it.' She said this with obvious reference to the flourish of the Dictator's cane; and it must be owned that a very pretty flash of light came into her eyes which signified that if she had quite her own way the offence might be resented after all.
'No, of course he can't resent it,' the Dictator said, in a tone which unmistakably conveyed the idea, 'and more's the pity.'
'Then what is the good of thinking about it?' Helena pleaded. 'Please, Mr. Ericson, don't trouble yourself in the least about it. These things will appear in those papers. If it were not you it would be somebody else. After all we must remember that there are two sides to this question as well as to others. I do not owe my publicity in the society papers to any merits or even to any demerits of my own. I am known to be the heiress to a large fortune, and the daughter of a Secretary of State.'
'That is no reason why you should be insulted.'
'No, certainly. But do you not think that in this over-worked and over-miserable England of ours there are thousands and thousands of poor girls ever so much better than I, who would be only too delighted to exchange with me—to put up with the paragraphs in the society papers for the sake of the riches and the father—and to abandon to me without a sigh the thimble and the sewing machine, and the daily slavery in the factory or behind the counter? Why, Mr. Ericson, only think of it. I can sit down whenever I like, and there are thousands and thousands of poor girls in England who dare not sit down during all their working hours.'
She spoke with increasing animation.
The Dictator looked at her with a genuine admiration. He knew that all she said was the true outcome of her nature and her feelings. Her sparkling eyes proclaimed the truth.
'You look at it rightly,' the Dictator said at last, 'and I feel almost ashamed of my scruples. Almost—but not quite—for they were scruples on your account and not upon my own.'
'Of course I know that,' she interrupted hastily. 'But please, Mr. Ericson, don't mind me. I don't care, and I know my father won't care. Do not—please do not—let this interfere in the least with your friendship; I cannot lose your friendship for this sort of thing. After all, you see, they can't force you to marry me if you don't want to;' and then she stopped, and was afraid, perhaps, that she had spoken too lightly and saucily, and that he might think her wanting in feeling. He did not think her wanting in feeling. He thought her nobly considerate, generous and kind. He thought she wanted to save him from embarrassment on her account, and to let him know that they were to continue good friends, true friends, in spite of what anybody might choose to say about them; and that there was to be no thought of anything but friendship. This was Helena's meaning in one sense, but not in another sense. She took it for granted that he was not in love with her, and she wished to make it clear to him that there was not the slightest reason for him to cease to be her friend because he could not be her lover. That was her meaning. Up to a certain point it was the meaning that he ascribed to her, but in her secret heart there was still a feeling which she did not express and which he could not divine.
'Then we are still to be friends?' he said. 'I am not to feel bound to cut myself off from seeing you because of all this talk?'
'Not unless you wish it.'
'Oh, wish it!' and he made an energetic gesture.
'I have talked very boldly to you,' Helena said—'cheekily, I fancy some people would call it; but I do so hate misunderstandings, and having others and myself made uncomfortable, and I do so prefer my happiness to my dignity! You see, I hadn't much of a mother's care, and I am a sort of wild-growth, and you must make allowance for me and forgive me, and take me for what I am.'
'Yes, I take you cordially for what you are,' the Dictator exclaimed, 'the noblest and the dearest girl in the world—to me.'
Helena flushed a little. But she was determined that the meaning of the flush was not to be known.
'Come,' she said, with a wholly affected coquetry of manner, 'I wonder if you have said that to any other girls—and if so, how many?'
The Dictator was not skilled in the wiles of coquetry. He fell innocently into the snare.
'The truth is,' he said simply, 'I hardly know any girl but you.'
Surely the Dictator had spoken out one of the things we ought to wish not to have said. It amused Helena, however, and greatly relieved her—in her present mood.
'Come,' she exclaimed, with a little spurt of laughter which was a relief to the tension of her feelings; 'the compliment, thank heaven, is all gone! Imustbe the dearest girl in the world to you—I can't help it, whatever my faults—if you do not happen to know any other girl!'
'Oh, I didn't meantthat.'
'Didn't mean even that? Didn't even mean that I had attained, for lack of any rival, to that lonely and that inevitable eminence?'
'Come, you are only laughing at me. I know what I meant myself.'
'Oh, but please don't explain. It is quite delightful as it is.'
They were now under the lights of the windows in Seagate Hall, and only just in time to dress for dinner.