“Sorry,” Wingrave answered, “if I ever had, I’ve forgotten it.”
“Then I must call you Wingrave,” she remarked. “I hate calling anyone I know decently well Mr. anything.”
“Charmed,” Wingrave answered; “it isn’t a bad name.”
“It isn’t,” she admitted. “By the bye,” she continued, looking at him critically, “you are rather a surprising person, aren’t you?”
“Glad you’ve found it out,” Wingrave answered. “I always thought so.”
“One associates all sorts of terrible things with millionaires—especially African and American ones,” she remarked. “Now you could pass anywhere for the ordinary sort of decent person.”
Wingrave nodded.
“I was told the other day,” he remarked reflectively, “that if I would only cultivate two things, I might almost pass as a member of the English aristocracy.”
“What were they?” she asked rashly.
“Ignorance and impertinence,” he answered.
The Marchioness was silent for a moment. There was a little more color than usual in her beautiful cheeks and a dangerous glitter in her eyes.
“You can go home, Mr. Wingrave,” she said.
He rose to his feet imperturbably. The Marchioness stretched out a long white hand and gently forced him back again.
“You mustn’t talk like that to me,” she said quietly. “I am sensitive.”
He bowed.
“A privilege, I believe, of your order,” he remarked.
“Of course, if you want to quarrel—” she began.
“I don’t,” he assured her.
“Then be sensible! I want to talk to you.”
“Sensible, alone with you!” he murmured. “I should establish a new record.”
“You certainly aren’t in the least like a millionaire,” she declared, smiling at him, “you are more like a—”
“Please go on,” he begged.
“I daren’t,” she answered, shaking her head.
“Then you aren’t in the least like a marchioness,” he declared. “At least, not like our American ideas of one.”
She laughed outright.
“Bring your chair quite close to mine,” she ordered, “I really want to talk to you.”
He obeyed, and affected to be absorbed in the contemplation of the rings on the hand which a great artist had called the most beautiful in England. She withdrew it a little peevishly, after a moment’s pause.
“I want to talk about the Barringtons,” she said. “Do you know that they are practically ruined?”
“I heard that Barrington had been gambling on the Stock Exchange the last few days,” he answered.
“He has lost a great deal of money,” she answered, “and they were almost on their last legs before. Are you going to set them straight again?”
“No idea,” he answered. “I haven’t been asked, for one thing.”
“Ruth will ask you, of course,” the Marchioness said impatiently. “I expect that she is waiting at your flat by now. I want to know whether you are going to do it.”
The hand was again very close to his. Again Wingrave contemplated the rings.
“I forgot that you were her friend, and are naturally anxious,” he remarked.
“I am not her friend,” the Marchioness answered, “and—I do not wish you to help them.”
Wingrave was silent. The hand was insistent, and he held it for a moment lightly, and then let it go.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “The Barringtons have been very hospitable to me.”
“Rubbish!” the Marchioness answered. “You have done quite enough for them already. Of course, you are a man—and you must choose. I am sure that you understand me.”
He rose to his feet.
“I must think this out,” he said. “The Barringtons have a sort of claim on me. I will let you know which way I decide.”
She stood close to him, and her hand fell upon his shoulder.
“You are not going!” she exclaimed. “I have told them that I am at home to no one, and I thought that you would stay and entertain me. Sit down again, Wingrave!”
“Sorry,” he answered, “I have a lot to do this afternoon. I came directly I had your note; but I have had to keep some other people waiting.”
“You are going to see Lady Ruth!”
“Not that I know of,” he declared. “I have heard nothing from her. By the bye, I lost some money to you at bridge the other evening. How much was it? Do you remember?”
She looked at him for a second, and turned away.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked.
“If you please. Put the amount down on a piece of paper, and then I sha’n’t forget it.”
She crossed the room to her desk, and returned with a folded envelope. He stuffed it into his waistcoat pocket.
“I shall be at the opera tonight,” she said. “Will you come there and tell me what—which you decide?”
“With pleasure,” he answered, “if I can get away from a stupid dinner in time.”
She let him go reluctantly. Afterwards she passed into her own room, and stood looking at herself in the pier glass. Artists and the society papers called her the most beautiful woman in England; fashion had placed her upon such a pinnacle that men counted it a distinction to be seen speaking to her. She dealt out her smiles and favors like Royalty itself; she had never once known a rebuff. This afternoon she felt that she had received one. Had she been too cold or too forward? Perhaps she had underestimated the man himself. She rang for her maid.
“Celeste,” she said, “I shall wear my new Paquin gown tonight at the opera, and my pearls.”
“Very good, your ladyship.”
“And I am going to lie down for an hour or two now. Don’t let me be disturbed. I want to look my best tonight. You understand?”
“Perfectly, your ladyship.”
The Marchioness rested, but she did not sleep. She was thinking of Wingrave!
It was not Lady Ruth, but her husband, who was waiting to see Wingrave on his return. Aynesworth was talking to him, but at once withdrew. Wingrave nodded with slightly upraised eyebrows. He never shook hands with Barrington.
“You wanted to see me?” he inquired, carelessly turning over a little pile of letters.
Barrington was ill at ease. He hated himself and he hated his errand.
“Yes, for a moment or two—if you’re not busy,” he said. “May I smoke? I’m nervous this morning.”
“Help yourself,” Wingrave said shortly. “Cigarettes and cigars on the sideboard. Touch the bell if you’ll take anything to drink.”
“Thanks—Aynesworth gave me a brandy and soda. Capital fellow, Aynesworth!”
“Have another,” Wingrave said shortly.
He crossed the room to the sideboard. Wingrave glanced up from his letters, and smiled coldly as he saw the shaking fingers.
“I don’t often indulge like this,” Barrington said, turning away from the sideboard with a tumbler already empty in his hands. “The fact is, I’ve had rather a rude knock, and Ruth thought I’d better come and see you.”
Wingrave remained a study of impassivity. His guest’s whole demeanor, his uneasy words and nervous glances were an unspoken appeal to be helped out in what he had come to say. And Wingrave knew very well what it was. Nevertheless, he remained silent—politely questioning. Barrington sat down a little heavily. He was not so carefully dressed as usual; he looked older, his appearance lacked altogether that air of buoyant prosperity which was wont to inspire his friends and creditors with confidence.
“I’ve been a fool, Wingrave,” he said. “You showed me how to make a little money a few weeks ago, and it seemed so easy that I couldn’t resist having a try by myself, only on rather a larger scale. I lost! Then I went in again to pull myself round, and I lost again. I lost—more than I can easily raise before settlement.”
“I am sorry,” Wingrave said politely. “It is very unwise to meddle in things you know so little about.”
For a moment the worm turned. Barrington rose to his feet, and with a deep flush upon his cheeks moved towards the door. But his spark of genuine feeling died out almost as soon as it had been kindled. Outside that door was ruin; within, as he very well knew, lay his only chance of salvation. He set down his hat, and turned round.
“Wingrave,” he said, “will you lend me some money?”
Wingrave looked at him with upraised eyebrows.
“I,” he remarked, “lend you money? Why should I?”
“Heaven knows,” Barrington answered. “It is you who have chosen to seek us out. You have forced upon us something which has at least the semblance of friendship. There is no one else whom I could ask. It isn’t only this damned Stock Exchange transaction. Everything has gone wrong with me for years. If I could have kept going till next July, I should have been all right. I have made a little success in the House, and I am promised a place in the next government. I know it seems queer that I should be asking you, but it is that—or ruin. Now you know how things are with me.”
“You are making,” Wingrave said quietly, “a mistake. I have not pretended or given the slightest evidence of any friendship for yourself.”
Barrington looked at him with slowly mounting color.
“You mean—”
“Precisely,” Wingrave interrupted. “I do not know what I might or might not do for Lady Ruth. I have not considered the subject. It has not, in fact, been presented to me.”
“It is the same thing,” Barrington declared hoarsely.
“Pardon me—it is not,” Wingrave answered.
“What I ask you to do,” Barrington said, “I ask on behalf of my wife.”
“As an ambassador,” Wingrave said coldly, “you are not acceptable to me. It is a matter which I could only discuss with Lady Ruth herself. If Lady Ruth has anything to say to me, I will hear it.”
Barrington stood quite still for several moments. The veins on his forehead stood out like tightly drawn cords, his breath came with difficulty. The light in his eyes, as he looked at Wingrave, was almost murderous.
“If Lady Ruth desires to see me,” Wingrave remarked slowly, “I shall be here at nine o’clock this evening. Tomorrow my movements are uncertain. You will excuse me if I hurry you away now. I have an engagement which is already overdue.”
Barrington took up his hat and left the room without a word. Wingrave remained in his chair. His eyes followed the departing figure of his visitor. When he was absolutely sure that he was alone, he covered his face with one hand. His engagement seemed to have been with his thoughts for he did not stir for nearly an hour later. Then he rang the bell for Aynesworth.
Wingrave did not speak for several moments after Aynesworth had entered the room. He had an engagement book before him and seemed to be deep in its contents. When at last he looked up, his forehead was furrowed with thought, and he had the weary air of a man who has been indulging in unprofitable memories.
“Aynesworth,” he said, “be so good as to ring up Walters and excuse me from dining with him tonight.”
Aynesworth nodded.
“Any particular form of excuse?” he asked.
“No! Say that I have an unavoidable engagement. I will see him tomorrow morning.”
“Anything else?” Aynesworth asked, preparing to leave the room.
“No! You might see that I have no visitors this evening. Lady Ruth is coming here at nine o’clock.”
“Lady Ruth is coming here,” Aynesworth repeated in a colorless tone. “Alone?”
“Yes.”
Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders, but made no remark. He turned towards the door, but Wingrave called him back.
“Your expression, Aynesworth,” he said, “interests me. Am I or the lady in question responsible for it?”
“I am sorry for Lady Ruth,” Aynesworth said. “I think that I am sorry, too, for her husband.”
“Why? She is coming of her own free will.”
“There are different methods of compulsion,” Aynesworth answered.
Wingrave regarded him thoughtfully.
“That,” he said, “is true. But I still do not understand why you are sorry for her.”
“Because,” Aynesworth said, “I know the history of a certain event, and I know you. It is, I suppose, for this end that you made use of them.”
Wingrave nodded.
“Quite right,” he declared. “I think that the time is not far off when that dear lady and I can cry quits. This time, too, I see nothing to impair my satisfaction at the probable finale. In various other cases, as you might remember, I have not been entirely successful.”
“It depends,” Aynesworth remarked drily, “upon what you term success.”
Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.
“I think,” he said coldly, “that you are aware of what my feelings and desired course of action have been with regard to those of my fellow creatures with whom I have happened to come into contact. It seems to me that I have been a trifle unfortunate in several instances.”
“As for instance?” Aynesworth asked.
“Well, to take a few cases only,” Wingrave continued, “there was the child down at Tredowen whom you were so anxious for me to befriend. Of course, I declined to do anything of the sort, and she ought, by rights, to have gone to some charitable institution, founded and supported by fools, and eventually become, perhaps, a domestic servant. Instead of which, some relation of her father turns up and provides for her lavishly. You must admit that that was unfortunate.”
“It depends upon the point of view,” Aynesworth remarked drily. “Personally, I considered it a most fortunate occurrence.”
“Naturally,” Wingrave agreed. “But then you are a sentimentalist. You like to see people happy, and you would even help to make them so if you could without any personal inconvenience. I am at the other pole. If I could collect humanity into one sentient force, I would set my heel upon it without hesitation. I try to do what I can with the atoms, but I have not the best of fortune. There was Mrs. Travers, now! There I should have been successful beyond a doubt if some busybody hadn’t sent that cable to her husband. I wonder if you were idiot enough to do that, Aynesworth?”
“If I had thought of the Marconigram,” Aynesworth said, “I am sure I should have done it. But as a matter of fact, I did not.”
“Just as well, so far as our relations are concerned,” Wingrave said coldly. “I did manage to make poor men of a few brokers in New York, but my best coup went wrong. That boy would have blown his brains out, I believe, if some meddling idiot hadn’t found him all that money at the last moment. I have had a few smaller successes, of course, and there is this affair of Lady Ruth and her estimable husband. You know that he came to borrow money of me, I suppose?”
“I guessed it,” Aynesworth answered. “You should be modern in your revenge and lend it to him.”
Wingrave smiled coldly.
“I fancy,” he said, “that Lumley Barrington will find my revenge modern enough. I may lend the money they need—but it will be to Lady Ruth! I told her husband so a few minutes ago. I told him to send his wife to me. He has gone to tell her now!”
“I wonder,” Aynesworth remarked, “that he did not thrash you—or try to.”
Again Wingrave’s lips parted.
“Moral deterioration has set in already,” he remarked. “When he pays his bills with my money, he will lose the little he has left of his self-respect.”
Aynesworth turned abruptly away. He was strongly tempted to say things which would have ended his connection with Wingrave, and as yet he was not ready to leave. For the sake of a digression, he took up a check book from the table.
“There are three checks,” he remarked, “which I cannot trace. One for ten thousand pounds, another for five, and a third for a thousand pounds. What account shall I put them to?”
“Private drawing account,” Wingrave answered. “They represent a small speculation. By the bye, you’d better go and ring up Walters.”
“Do you wish the particulars entered in your sundry investment book?” Aynesworth asked.
Wingrave smiled grimly.
“I think not,” he answered. “You can put them to drawing account. If you want me again this evening, I shall dine at the Cafe Royal at eight o’clock, and shall return here at five minutes to nine.”
. . . . . . . . . . .
Lady Ruth was punctual. At a few minutes past nine, Morrison announced that a lady had called to see Mr. Wingrave by appointment.
“You can show her in,” Wingrave said. “See that we are not disturbed.”
Lady Ruth was scarcely herself. She was dressed in a high-necked muslin gown, and she wore a hat and veil, which somewhat obscured her features. The latter she raised, however, as she accepted the chair which Wingrave had placed for her. He saw then that she was pale, and her manner betrayed an altogether unfamiliar nervousness. She avoided his eyes.
“Did you expect me?” she asked.
“Yes!” he answered, “I thought that you would come.”
Her foot, long and slender, beat impatiently upon the ground. She looked up at him once, but immediately withdrew her eyes.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked in a low tone.
“My dear Lady Ruth!” he protested.
“If you want to play at being friends,” she said, “for heaven’s sake call me Ruth. You found it easy enough once.”
“You are very kind,” he answered. “Ruth, by all means.”
“Now will you answer my question?” she said. “Do you mean—to help us?”
“Us—no!” he answered; “you—perhaps yes!” he added.
Then she looked at him, and found herself puzzled by the perfect impassivity of his features. Surely he would drop the mask now. He had insisted upon her coming!
“Perhaps?” she repeated. “What then—are the conditions?”
He bent over towards her. Curiously enough, there was, mingled with many other sensations, a certain sense of triumph in the thought, it was almost a hope, that at last he was going to betray himself, that he was going to admit tacitly, or by imputation, that her power over him was not wholly dead. It was a terrible situation—in her heart she felt so, but it had its compensations. Wingrave had been her constant attendant for months. He had seen her surrounded by men, all anxious to secure a smile from her; he had seen her play the great lady in her own house, and she played it very well. She knew that she was a past mistress in the arts which fascinate his sex, she understood the quiet speeches, the moods, every trick of the gamester in emotions, from the fluttering of eyelids to the unchaining of the passions. And he had loved her. Underneath it all, he must love her now. She was determined that he should tell her so. It was genuine excitement which throbbed in her pulses, a genuine color which burned in her cheeks.
“The conditions?” he repeated. “You believe, then, that I mean to make conditions?”
She raised her eyes to his, eloquent eyes she knew, and looked at him. The mask was still there—but he had moved a little nearer to her.
“I do not know,” she said softly. “You must tell me.”
There was a moment’s silence. She had scarcely given herself credit for such capacity for emotion. He was on his feet. Surely the mask must go now! And then—she felt that it must be a nightmare. It was incredible! He had struck a match and was calmly lighting a cigarette.
“One,” he said coolly, “is that Mademoiselle Violet employs no more amateur assassins to make clumsy attempts upon my life.”
She sat in her place rigid—half frozen with a cold, numbing fear. He had sent for her, then, only to mock her. She had failed! They were not even to have the money! Speech was quite impossible. Then he continued.
“I will take your assent for granted,” he said. “Do you know how much you require to free yourself?”
“About eight thousand pounds!” she answered mechanically.
He sat down and wrote a check, which he laid before her.
“You will have to endorse that,” he remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. “Your name at the back will do instead of a receipt.”
She sprang to her feet.
“Keep your money,” she cried. “I will not touch it. Please open the door for me! I am going.”
“By all means—if you wish it,” he answered undisturbed. “At the same time, I am curious to know why you came here at all if you did not intend to accept it.”
She faced him, hot and angry.
“I did intend to accept it,” she declared. “It is that or ruin. But you are too cruel! You make it—impossible.”
“You surprise me,” he answered. “I suppose you know best.”
“For heaven’s sake tell me,” she cried passionately, “what has come to you, what manner of a man are you? You loved me once! Now, even, after all these years, you cannot deny it. You have gone out of your way to be with me, to be my companion wherever we are. People are beginning to smile when they see us together. I don’t mind. I—for God’s sake tell me, Wingrave! Why do you do it? Why do you lend me this money? What can I do for you? What do you want me to be? Are you as cold as a stone? Have you no heart—no heart even for friendship!”
“I would not seek,” he answered, “to buy—your friendship with a check!”
“But it is yours already,” she cried, holding out her hands. “Give me a little kindness, Wingrave! You make me feel and seem a perfect idiot. Why, I’d rather you asked me anything that treated me like this.”
“I was under the impression,” Wingrave remarked, “that I was behaving rather well. I wonder what would really satisfy you!”
“To have you behave as you are doing, and want to behave differently,” she cried. “You are magnificent—but it is because you are indifferent. Will you kiss me, Wingrave?”
“With pleasure!” he answered.
She drew away from him quickly.
“Is it—another woman?” she asked. “The Marchioness?”
Her eagerness was almost painful. He did not answer her at once. She caught hold of his wrist and drew him towards her. Her eyes searched his face.
“The Marchioness,” he said, “is a very beautiful woman. She does not, however, affect the situation as between you and me.”
“If she dared!” Lady Ruth murmured. “Wingrave, won’t you try and be friends with me?”
“I will try—certainly,” he answered. “You would be surprised, however, if you could realize the effect of a long period of enforced seclusion upon a man of my—”
“Don’t!” she shrieked; “stop!”
“My temperament, I was about to say,” he concluded. “There was a time when I am afraid I might have been tempted, under such circumstances as these, to forget that you were no longer free, to forget everything that except we were alone, and that you—are as beautiful as ever you were!”
“Yes!” she murmured, moving imperceptibly a little nearer towards him.
He picked up the check and gave it to her.
“I am no actor,” he said, looking at her steadily. “At present, I make no conditions. But—”
She leaned towards him. He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips.
“I may make them later,” he said. “I reserve my right.”
She looked at him for a moment, and dropped her veil.
“Please take me down to my carriage,” she asked.
“I am perfectly certain,” Juliet declared, “that we ought not to be here.”
“That,” Aynesworth remarked, fanning himself lightly with his pocket handkerchief, “may account for the extraordinary sense of pleasure which I am now experiencing. At the same time, I can’t see why not.”
“I only met you this afternoon—a few hours ago. And here we are, absolutely wedged together on these seats—and my chaperon is dozing half the time.”
“Pardon me,” Aynesworth objected, “I knew you when you were a child.”
“For one day!”
“Nevertheless,” Aynesworth persisted, “the fact remains. If you date our acquaintance from this afternoon, I do not. I have never forgotten the little girl in short frocks and long black hair, who showed me where the seagulls built, and told me Cornish fairy stories.”
“It was a very long time ago,” she remarked.
“Four years,” he answered; “for you, perhaps, a long time, because you have changed from a child—into a woman. But for a man approaching middle age—as I am—nothing!”
“That is all very well,” she answered, “but I am not sure that we ought to be in the gallery at Covent Garden together, with a chaperon who will sleep!”
“She will wake up,” he declared, “with the music.”
“And I,” she murmured, “will dream. Isn’t it lovely?”
He smiled.
“I wonder how it really seems to you,” he remarked. “We are breathing an atmosphere hot with gas, and fragrant with orange peel. We are squashed in amongst a crowd of people of a class whom I fancy that neither you nor I know much about. And I saw you last in a wilderness! We saw only the yellow sands, and the rocks, and the Atlantic. We heard only the thunder of the sea and the screaming of seagulls. This is very different.”
“Wonderfully, wonderfully different,” she answered. “I miss it all! Of course I do, and yet one is so much nearer to life here, the real life of men and women. Oh, one cannot compare it. Why should one try? Ah, listen!”
The curtain went up. The music of the orchestra subsided, and the music of the human voice floated through the Opera House—the human voice, vibrant with joy and passion and the knowledge which lies behind the veil. Juliet found no time to talk then, no time to think even of her companion. Her young cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright with excitement. She leaned a little forward in her place, she passed with all the effortless facility of her ingenuous youth, into the dim world of golden fancies which the story of the opera was slowly unfolding. Beside her, Mrs. Tresfarwin dozed and blinked and dozed again—and on her left Aynesworth himself, a little affected by the music, still found time to glance continually at his companion, so radiant with life and so fervently intent upon realizing to the full this, the first of its unknown joys. So with crashing of chords and thunder of melody the act went on. And when it was over, Juliet thought no more of the Cornish sea and the lullaby of the waves. A new music was stirring in her young blood.
They were in the front row of the gallery, and presently she leaned over to gaze down at the panorama below, the women in the boxes and stalls, whose bare shoulders and skillfully coiffured hair flashed with jewels. Suddenly her hand fell upon Aynesworth’s arm.
“Look!” she cried in some excitement, “do you see who that is in the box there—the one almost next to the stage?”
Aynesworth, too, uttered a little exclamation. The lights from beneath were falling full upon the still, cold face of the man who had just taken a vacant chair in one of the boxes.
“Wingrave!” he exclaimed, and glanced at once at his watch.
“Sir Wingrave Seton,” she murmured. “Isn’t it strange that I should see him here tonight?”
“He comes often,” Aynesworth answered. “Music is one of his few weaknesses.”
There was a movement in the box, and a woman’s head and shoulders appeared from behind the curtain. Juliet gave a little gasp.
“Mr. Aynesworth,” she exclaimed, “did you ever see such a beautiful woman? Do tell me who she is!”
“A very great lady in London society,” Aynesworth answered. “That is Emily, Marchioness of Westchester.”
Juliet’s eyes never moved from her until the beautiful neck and shoulders were turned away. She leaned over towards her companion, and she did not again, for some few minutes, face the house.
“She is the loveliest woman I ever saw in my life,” Juliet said with a little sigh. “Is she a great friend of Sir Wingrave Seton, Mr. Aynesworth?”
“He has no friends,” Aynesworth answered. “I believe that they are very well acquainted.”
“Poor Sir Wingrave!” Juliet murmured softly.
Aynesworth looked at her in some surprise.
“It is odd that you should have recognized him from up here,” he remarked thoughtfully. “He has changed so much during the last few years.”
Juliet smiled, but she did not explain. She felt that she was obeying Wingrave’s wishes.
“I should have recognized him anywhere,” she answered simply. “I wonder what they are talking about. She seems so interested, and he looks so bored.”
Aynesworth looked at his watch. It was barely ten o’clock.
“I am very glad to see him here this evening,” he remarked.
“I should like so much,” she said, still gazing at them earnestly, “to know that they are talking about.”
. . . . . . . . . . .
“So you will not tell me,” the Marchioness murmured, ceasing for a moment the graceful movements of her fan, and looking at him steadily. “You refuse me this—almost the first thing I have ever asked you?”
“It is scarcely,” Wingrave objected, “a reasonable question.”
“Between you and me,” she murmured, “such punctiliousness is scarcely necessary—is it?”
He withstood the attack of those wonderful eyes lifted swiftly to his, and answered her gravely.
“You are Lady Ruth’s friend,” he remarked. “Probably, therefore, she will tell you all about it.”
The Marchioness laughed softly, yet with something less than mirth.
“Friends,” she exclaimed, “Lady Ruth and I? There was never a woman in this world who was less my friend—especially now!”
He asked for no explanation of her last words, but in a moment or two she vouchsafed it. She leaned a little forward, her eyes flashed softly through the semi-darkness.
“Lady Ruth is afraid,” she said quietly, “that I might take you away from her.”
“My dear lady,” he protested, “the slight friendship between Lady Ruth and myself is not of the nature to engender such a fear.”
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders. Her hands were toying with the rope of pearls which hung from her neck. She bent over them, as though examining the color of the stones.
“How long have you known Ruth?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her steadfastly. He could not be sure whether it was his fancy, or whether indeed there was some hidden meaning in her question.
“Since I came to live in England,” he answered.
“Ah!”
There was a moment’s silence. Then with a little wave of her hands and a brilliant smile, she figuratively dismissed the subject.
“We waste time,” she remarked lightly, “and we may have callers at any moment. I will ask you no more questions save those which the conventions may permit you to answer truthfully. We can’t depart from our code, can we, even for the sake of an inquisitive woman?”
“I can assure you—” he began.
“But I will have no assurances,” she interrupted smilingly. “I am going to talk of other things. I am going to ask you a ridiculous question. Are you fond of music?—seriously!”
“I believe so,” he answered. “Why?”
“Because,” she answered, “I sometimes wonder what there is in the world that interests you! Certainly, none of the ordinary things seem to. Tonight, almost for the first time, I saw you look a little drawn out of yourself. I was wondering whether it was the music or the people. I suppose, until one gets used to it,” she added, looking a little wearily around the house, “an audience like this is worth looking at.”
“It certainly is not the people,” he said. “Do you make as close a study of all your acquaintances?”
“Naturally not,” she answered, “and I do not class you amongst my acquaintances at all. You interest me, my friend—very much indeed!”
“I am flattered,” he murmured.
“You are not—I wish that you were,” she answered simply. “I can understand why you have succeeded where so many others have failed. You are strong. You have nerves of steel—and very little heart. But now—what are you going to do with your life, now that wealth must even have lost its meaning to you? I should like to know that. Will you tell me?”
“What is there to do?” he asked. “Eat and drink, and juggle a little with the ball of fate.”
“You are not ambitious?”
“Not in the least.”
“Pleasure, for itself, does not attract you. No! I know that it does not. What are you going to do, then?”
“I have no idea,” he answered. “Won’t you direct me?”
“Yes, I will,” she answered, “if you will pay my price.”
He looked at her more intently. He himself had been attaching no particular importance to this conversation, but he was suddenly conscious that it was not so with the woman at his side. Her eyes were shining at him, soft and full and sweet; her beautiful bosom was rising and falling quickly; there had come to her something which even he was forced to recognize, that curious and voluptuous abandonment which a woman rarely permits herself, and can never assume. He was a little bewildered. His speech lost for a moment its cold precision.
“Your price?” he repeated. “I—I am stupid. I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Marry me,” she whispered in his ear, “and I will take you a little further into life than you could ever go alone You don’t care for me, of course—but you shall. You don’t understand this world, Wingrave, or how to make the best of it. I do! Let me be your guide!”
Wingrave looked at her in grave astonishment.
“You are not by any chance—in earnest?” he asked.
“You know very well that I am,” she answered swiftly. “And yet you hesitate! What is it that you are afraid of? Don’t you like to give up your liberty? We need not marry unless you choose. That is only a matter of form nowadays at any rate. I have a hundred chaperons to choose from. Society expects strange things from me. It is your companionship I want. Your money is fascinating, of course. I should like to see you spend it, to spend it with both hands. Don’t be afraid that we should be talked about. I am not Lady Ruth! I am Emily, Marchioness of Westchester, and I live and choose my friends as I please; will you be chief amongst them? Hush!”
For Wingrave it was providential. The loud chorus which had heralded the upraising of the curtain died away. Melba’s first few notes were floating through the house. Silence was a necessity. The low passion of the music rippled from the stage, through the senses and into the hearts of many of the listeners. But Wingrave listened silent and unmoved. He was even unconscious that the woman by his side was watching him half anxiously every now and then.
The curtain descended amidst a thunder of applause. Wingrave turned slowly towards his companion. And then there came a respite—a knock at the door.
The Marchioness frowned, but Wingrave was already holding it open. Lady Ruth, followed by an immaculate young guardsman, a relative of her husband, was standing there.
“Mr. Wingrave!” she exclaimed softly, with upraised eyebrows, “why have you contrived to render yourself invisible? We thought you were alone, Emily,” she continued, “and took pity on you. And all the time you had a prize.”
The Marchioness looked at Lady Ruth, and Lady Ruth looked at the Marchioness. The young guardsman was a little sorry that he had come, but Lady Ruth never turned a hair.
“You must really have your eyes seen to, dear,” the Marchioness remarked in a tone of tender concern. “When you can’t see such an old friend as Mr. Wingrave from a few yards away, they must be very bad indeed. How are you, Captain Kendrick? Come and tell me about the polo this afternoon. Sorry I can’t offer you all chairs. This is an absurd box—it was only meant for two!”
“Come into ours,” Lady Ruth said; “we have chairs for six, I think.”
The Marchioness shook her head.
“I wish I had a millionaire in the family,” she murmured. “All the same, I hate large parties. I am old-fashioned enough to think that two is a delightful number.”
Lady Ruth laid her hand upon Wingrave’s arm.
“A decided hint, Mr. Wingrave,” she declared. “Come and let me introduce you to my sister. Our box is only a few yards off.”