第53章

"I'm an old friend of Mrs.Leath's.It's not unnatural that Madame de Chantelle should talk to me."She dropped the screen on the table and stood up, turning on him the same small mask of wrath and scorn which had glared at him, in Paris, when he had confessed to his suppression of her letter.She walked away a step or two and then came back.

"May I ask what Madame de Chantelle said to you?""She made it clear that she should not encourage the marriage.""And what was her object in making that clear to YOU?"Darrow hesitated."I suppose she thought----""That she could persuade you to turn Mrs.Leath against me?"He was silent, and she pressed him: "Was that it?""That was it."

"But if you don't--if you keep your promise----""My promise?"

"To say nothing...nothing whatever..." Her strained look threw a haggard light along the pause.

As she spoke, the whole odiousness of the scene rushed over him."Of course I shall say nothing...you know that..." He leaned to her and laid his hand on hers."You know Iwouldn't for the world..."

She drew back and hid her face with a sob.Then she sank again into her seat, stretched her arms across the table and laid her face upon them.He sat still, overwhelmed with compunction.After a long interval, in which he had painfully measured the seconds by her hard-drawn breathing, she looked up at him with a face washed clear of bitterness.

"Don't suppose I don't know what you must have thought of me!"The cry struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement.

"My poor child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is that I've never thought of you at all!" But he could only uselessly repeat: "I'll do anything I can to help you."She sat silent, drumming the table with her hand.He saw that her doubt of him was allayed, and the perception made him more ashamed, as if her trust had first revealed to him how near he had come to not deserving it.Suddenly she began to speak.

"You think, then, I've no right to marry him?""No right? God forbid! I only meant----""That you'd rather I didn't marry any friend of yours." She brought it out deliberately, not as a question, but as a mere dispassionate statement of fact.

Darrow in turn stood up and wandered away helplessly to the window.He stood staring out through its small discoloured panes at the dim brown distances; then he moved back to the table.

"I'll tell you exactly what I meant.You'll be wretched if you marry a man you're not in love with."He knew the risk of misapprehension that he ran, but he estimated his chances of success as precisely in proportion to his peril.If certain signs meant what he thought they did, he might yet--at what cost he would not stop to think--make his past pay for his future.

The girl, at his words, had lifted her head with a movement of surprise.Her eyes slowly reached his face and rested there in a gaze of deep interrogation.He held the look for a moment; then his own eyes dropped and he waited.

At length she began to speak."You're mistaken--you're quite mistaken."He waited a moment longer."Mistaken----?""In thinking what you think.I'm as happy as if I deserved it!" she suddenly proclaimed with a laugh.

She stood up and moved toward the door."NOW are you satisfied?" she asked, turning her vividest face to him from the threshold.

XXI

Down the avenue there came to them, with the opening of the door, the voice of Owen's motor.It was the signal which had interrupted their first talk, and again, instinctively, they drew apart at the sound.Without a word Darrow turned back into the room, while Sophy Viner went down the steps and walked back alone toward the court.

At luncheon the presence of the surgeon, and the non-appearance of Madame de Chantelle--who had excused herself on the plea of a headache--combined to shift the conversational centre of gravity; and Darrow, under shelter of the necessarily impersonal talk, had time to adjust his disguise and to perceive that the others were engaged in the same re-arrangement.It was the first time that he had seen young Leath and Sophy Viner together since he had learned of their engagement; but neither revealed more emotion than befitted the occasion.It was evident that Owen was deeply under the girl's charm, and that at the least sign from her his bliss would have broken bounds; but her reticence was justified by the tacitly recognized fact of Madame de Chantelle's disapproval.This also visibly weighed on Anna's mind, making her manner to Sophy, if no less kind, yet a trifle more constrained than if the moment of final understanding had been reached.So Darrow interpreted the tension perceptible under the fluent exchange of commonplaces in which he was diligently sharing.But he was more and more aware of his inability to test the moral atmosphere about him: he was like a man in fever testing another's temperature by the touch.

After luncheon Anna, who was to motor the surgeon home, suggested to Darrow that he should accompany them.Effie was also of the party; and Darrow inferred that Anna wished to give her step-son a chance to be alone with his betrothed.

On the way back, after the surgeon had been left at his door, the little girl sat between her mother and Darrow, and her presence kept their talk from taking a personal turn.

Darrow knew that Mrs.Leath had not yet told Effie of the relation in which he was to stand to her.The premature divulging of Owen's plans had thrown their own into the background, and by common consent they continued, in the little girl's presence, on terms of an informal friendliness.