Out of the Primitive Part 19

So glad to meet you again,--and here, of all places! Don't forget to look me up at my clubs."

"Hearts are trumps, Laffie--not clubs," called Dolores, as Lord James pa.s.sed him by with a vague nod.

CHAPTER X

THE SHADOW OF DOUBT

Before the earl had reached them Mrs. Gantry was rising.

Genevieve rose to protest. "You're not going so soon, Aunt Amice?

You'll stay for a cup of tea?"

"Not to-day, my dear. Ah, earl! you're just in time to relieve Genevieve from the ennui of a solitary afternoon. I regret so much that we cannot stay with you. Come, Dolores."

Dolores settled back comfortably on her chair. "Go right on, mamma.

Don't wait for me. I'll stay and help Vievie entertain Lord Avondale."

"Come--at once."

"Oh, fudge! Well, start on. I'll catch you."

Mrs. Gantry stepped past Lord James. Genevieve met his eager glance, and hastened to overtake her aunt. "Really, won't you stay, Aunt Amice?

I'll have tea brought in at once."

"So sorry, my dear," replied Mrs. Gantry, placidly sailing on towards the reception hall.

Dolores simulated a yawn. "O-o-ho! I'm _so_ tired. Will n.o.body help me get up?"

With a boyish twinkle in his gray eyes but profound gravity In his manner, Lord James offered her his hand. She placed her fingers in his palm and sprang up beside him. The others were still moving up the room. She surprised him by meeting his amused gaze with an angry flash of her big black eyes.

"Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would take her from him!"

He stared blankly. The girl whirled away from him with a swish of silken skirts and fled past her mother, all her anger lost in wild panic.

"Dolores! Whatever can--" cried Mrs. Gantry. But Dolores had vanished.

"Really, Genevieve, that madcap girl--! About yourself, my dear.

Promise me now, if you cannot say 'yes,' at least you'll not make it a final 'no.'"

"But, Aunt Amice, unless I feel--"

"Promise me! You must give yourself time to make sure. He will wait. I am certain he will wait until you have found out--"

"I cannot promise anything now," replied Genevieve.

Mrs. Gantry did not press the point. It was the second time during the call that her niece had proved herself less docile than she had expected. As she left the room, Genevieve returned to Lord James without any outward sign of hesitancy. She seated herself and smiled composedly at her caller, who still stood in the daze into which Dolores's outburst had thrown him.

"Won't you sit down?" she invited. "How is Mr. Blake?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would take her from him!"]

With rather an abstracted air, Lord James sank down on the chair opposite her and began fiddling with the cord of his monocle.

"Haven't seen him since yesterday," he replied, "Left him at the office of a Mr. Griffith--engineer--old friend. Gave him work immediately--something big, I take it. Asked Tom to bunk with him."

"It's so good to hear he has work already--and to stay with a friend!

You mean, live with him?"

"Yes."

"He--the friend--seems desirable?"

"Decidedly so, I should say. Engineer who first started him on his career, if I remember aright what Tom once told me of his early life."

"Oh, that is such good news! But have you seen him since--since this morning? He had that appointment with papa, you know."

"No, I regret to say I haven't; and I fear I cannot rea.s.sure you as to the outcome. You know Tom's way; and your father, I take it, is rather--It would seem that they had a disagreement before Tom went West the last time."

"Yes. He once referred to it. Some misunderstanding with regard to the payment of a railway survey. I asked papa about it last evening, and he told me that it had been made all right--that Tom would get his pay for his share in the survey."

"Little enough, in the circ.u.mstances," remarked Lord James.

"That was not all. Papa promised to give him a very good position. He had intended to offer money. But I explained to him that, of course, Tom would not accept money."

"Very true. I doubt if he would have accepted it even had it not been for his hope that--" Lord James paused and stared glumly at his finger-tips. "Bally mess, deuce take it! He and your father at outs, and he and I--"

"You have not quarrelled? You're still friends?" exclaimed Genevieve.

"Quarrelled? No, I a.s.sure you, no! Yet am I his friend? Permit me to be candid, Miss Leslie. I'm in a deuce of a quandary. On the trip up to Aden, you'll remember, I told you something of the way he and I had knocked about together."

"Yes. Frankly, it added not a little to my esteem for you that you had learned to value his sterling worth."

"I did not tell you how it started. It was in the Kootenay country--British Columbia, you know. Bunch of sharpers set about to rook me on a frame-up--a bunco game. Tom tipped me off, though I had snubbed him, like the egregious a.s.s I was. I paid no heed; blundered into the trap. Wouldn't have minded losing the thousand pounds they wanted, but they brought a woman into the affair--made it appear as if I were a cad--or worse."

"Surely not that, Lord James. No one could believe that of you."

"You don't know the beastly cleverness of those bunco chaps. They had me in a nasty hole, when Tom stepped in and showed them up. Seems he knew more about the woman and two of the men than they cared to have published. They decamped."

"That was so like Tom!" murmured Genevieve.

"Claimed he did it because of an old grudge against the parties. Had to force my thanks on him. Told you how we'd chummed together since. Deuce take it! why should it have been you on that steamer--with him?"

"Why?" echoed Genevieve, gazing down at her clasped hands, which still showed a trace of tropical tan.

"You know it--it puts me in rather a nasty box," went on Lord James.

"Had I not met you before he did, it is possible that I could have avoided--You see my predicament. He and I've been together so much, I can foresee the effect on him of--er--of a great disappointment."