第65章

She knew it was most stupidly wrong.She knew gentlemen did not like tears.Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who cried at them.And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not able to behave herself with feminine decorum.

Yet the new Mr.Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of- fact a manner as he seemed to take everything.He stood by her chair and soothed her in his dear New York voice.

"That's all right, Miss Alicia," he commented."You cry as much as you want to, just so that you don't say no.You've been worried and you're tired.I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when Ishould like to have cried myself if I'd known how.Say," he added with a sudden outburst of imagination, "I bet anything it's about time you had tea."The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.

"A cup of tea would be refreshing," she said."They will bring it in very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express--"But before she could express anything further the tea appeared.

Burrill and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant.As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the firmness of his hold on the smaller tray.Each recovered himself in time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia's presence made.Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:

"I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple Barholm's box; he is asking when she wants the trap.""She doesn't want it at all," answered Tembarom."Carry her trunk up-stairs again.She's not going away."

The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but she spoke with outward calm.

"No, Burrill," she said."I am not going away.""Very good, Miss," Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he prepared to leave the room.Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.

"There's only one cup here," he said."Bring one for me."Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.

"Very good, sir," he said, and made his exit.Miss Alicia was fluttering again.

"That cup was really for you, Mr.Temple Barholm," she ventured.

"Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it," replied Tembarom.

"Oh, PLEASE," she said in an outburst of feeling--"PLEASE let me tell you how GRATEFUL--how grateful I am!"But he would not let her.

"If you do," he said, "I'll tell you how grateful _I_ am, and that'll be worse.No, that's all fixed up between us.It goes.We won't say any more about it."He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their drifting across each other--as though it was only what any man would have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected happening.He turned to the tray.

"Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?" he said."Now you are here, Ilike the way it looks.I didn't yesterday."

Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate.He wished to make sure that his senses had not deceived him.But there she sat who through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her privileges--there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this new outbreak into Temple Barholm's and "him joking and grinning as though he was as pleased as Punch."