Prince Fortunatus Part 65

"I hope you won't think me unkind," she repeated. "I am sure it will be better for both of us to have that tie broken. If I had not thought that it would be as grateful to you as to me to be released, be sure I would not have come and spoken to you while you were lying on a sick-bed. Now, I promised Mr. Mangan not to talk too much nor to agitate you," said she, as she rose, and smoothed her sun-shade, and made ready to depart.

"I hope you will get strong and well very soon; and that you will come back to the New Theatre with your voice as splendid as ever." But still she lingered a little. She felt that her immediate departure might seem too abrupt; it would look as if she had secured the object of her visit, and was therefore ready to run away at once. So she chatted a little further, and looked at the photographs on the wall; and again she hoped he would be well soon and back at the theatre. At last she said, "Well, good-bye." Gave him her gloved hand for a second; then she went out and was joined by her brother. Mangan saw them both down-stairs, and returned to Lionel's room.

"Had her ladyship any important communication to make?" he asked, in his careless way.

"She proposed that our engagement should be broken off--and I consented," said Lionel, simply.

Mangan, who was going to the window, suddenly stood stock-still and stared, as if he had not heard aright.

"And it is broken off?" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

There was a dead silence. Presently Maurice said,

"Well, that is the best piece of news I have received for many a day--for you don't seem heartbroken, Linn. And now--have you any plans?--perhaps you have hardly had time?--"

He was looking at Lionel--wondering whether the same idea was in both their heads--and yet afraid to speak.

"Maurice," Lionel said, presently, with some hesitation, "tell me--could I ask Nina--look at me--such a wreck--could I ask her to become my wife?

It's about Capri I am thinking--we could go together there, when I am a bit stronger--"

There was a flash of satisfaction in the deep-set, friendly gray eyes.

"This is what I expected, Linn. Well, put the question to herself--and the sooner the better!"

"Yes, but--" Lionel said, as if afraid.

"Oh, I know," Maurice said, confidently. "Tell Nina that you are not yet quite recovered--that you have need of her care--and she will go to the world's end with you. Only you must get married first, for the sake of appearances."

"What will she say, Maurice?" he asked again, as if there were some curious doubt, or perhaps merely timidity, in his mind.

"I think I know, but I am not going to tell," his friend answered, lightly. "I am off up-stairs now. I will send Nina down; but without a word of warning. You'll have to lead up to it yourself--and good-luck to you, my boy!" And therewith Maurice departed to seek out Nina in the chamber above; and as he went up the stairs he was saying to himself, "Well, well; and so Miss Burgoyne did that of her own free will? I may have done the young woman some injustice. Perhaps she is not so selfish and hard after all. Wish I had been more civil to her."

Meanwhile Miss Burgoyne and her brother were walking in the direction of Regent Street.

"Now, Jim," she said, with almost a gay air, "I have just completed a most delicate and difficult negotiation, and I feel quite exhausted. You must take me into a restaurant and give me the very nicest and neatest bit of luncheon you can possibly devise--all pretty little trifles, for we mustn't interfere with dinner; and I am going to see how you can do it--"

"Well, but, Katie," he said, frowning, "where do you suppose--"

"Oh, don't he stupid!" she exclaimed, slipping her purse into his hand.

"I am going to judge of your _savoir faire_; I will see whether you get a nice table; whether you order the proper things; whether you command sufficient attention--"

"I was never taught to bully waiters," said he.

"To bully waiters!--is that your notion of _savoir faire_?" she answered, lightly. "My dear Jim, the bullying of a waiter is the most obvious and outward sign of the ingrained, incurable cad. No, no. That is what I do not expect of you, Jim. And I am going to leave the whole affair in your hands; for while you are ordering for me a most elegant little luncheon, I have an extremely important letter to send off."

So it was that when brother and sister were seated at a small table on the ground-floor of a well-known Regent Street restaurant, Miss Burgoyne had writing materials brought her, and she wrote her letter while Jim was in shy confabulation with the waiter. It was not a lengthened epistle; it ran so:

"Tuesday.

"DEAR PERCY.--Let it be as you wish.

"Your loving

"KATE.

"P.S. When shall you be in town? Come and see me."

She folded and enclosed and addressed the letter; but she did not give it to the waiter to post. It was of too great moment for that. She put it in her pocket; she would herself see it safely despatched.

Well, for a boy, Jim had not done so badly; though, to be sure, his sister did not seem to pay much attention to these delicacies. Her brain was too busy. As she trifled with this thing or that, or sipped a little wine, she said,

"Jim, I know what the dream of your life is--it's to go to a big pheasant-shoot."

"Oh, is it?" he said, with the scorn born of superior knowledge. "Not much. I've tried my hand at pheasants. I know what they are. It's all very well for those fellows in the papers to talk about the easy shooting--the slaughter--the tame birds--and all that bosh; fellows who couldn't hit a stuffed c.o.c.katoo at twenty yards. No, thanks; I know what pheasants are--the beasts!"

"Well, what kind of shooting would you really like?" said this indulgent sister.

"I'll tell you," he said, with his face brightening. "I should like to have the run of a good rabbit-warren, and to be allowed to wander about entirely by myself, with a gun and a spaniel. No keeper looking on and worrying and criticising--that's my idea."

"All right," said she, "I think I can promise you that."

"You?" he said, looking at her, and wondering if she had gone out of her wits.

"Yes," she answered, sweetly. "Don't you think there will be plenty of rabbits about a place like Petmansworth?"

"And what then?"

"Well, I'm going to marry Sir Percival Miles," said Miss Kate, with much serene complacency.

CHAPTER XXVII

A REUNION.

Here is a long balcony, shaded by pillared arches, the windows hung with loose blinds of reeds in gray and scarlet. If you adventure out into the hot sunlight, you may look away down the steep and rugged hill, where there are groups of flat-roofed, white houses dotted here and there among the dark palms and olives and arbored vines; and then your eyes naturally turn to the vast extent of shimmering blue sea, with the faint outline of the Italian coast and the peaked Vesuvius beyond. But inside, in the s.p.a.cious, rather bare rooms, it is cooler; and in one of these, at the farther end, stands a young man in front of a piano, striking a chord from time to time, and exercising a voice that does not seem to have lost much of its _timbre_; while there is an exceedingly pretty, gentle-eyed, rather foreign-looking young lady engaged in putting flowers on the central table, which is neatly and primly laid out for four.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_'I have an extremely important letter to send off.'_"]

"Come, Leo," she says, "is it not enough? You are in too great a hurry, I believe. Are you jealous of Mr. Doyle? Do you wish to go back at once?

No, no; we must get Mr. Mangan and his bride to make a long stay, before we go over with them to the big towns on the mainland. Will you go out and see if the _Risposta_ is visible yet."

"What splendid weather for Maurice and Francie, isn't it, Ntoniella?"

said he (for there are other pet names besides the familiar Nina for any one called Antonia). "I wish we could have had our wedding-day along with theirs. Well, at least we will have our honeymoon trip along with them; and we shall have to be their guides, you know, in Venice and Rome and Florence, for neither of them knows much Italian."