The Adventures of a Widow Part 24

"Yes. Did that woman say anything more?"

"Yes," Pauline answered, after a little silence, with lowered eyes.

"Ah!" sounded Kindelon's exasperated sigh. "I can almost guess what it was," he went on. "She was not content, then, with saying atrocious things of your marriage; she must couple our names together--yours and mine."

"She mentioned another name still," said Pauline, who continued to gaze at the floor. "It was the name of Cora Dares." Pauline lifted her eyes, now; they wore a determined, glittering look. "She said that Cora Dares was madly in love with you. 'Madly' struck me as an odd enough word to apply to that gentle, dignified girl."

"It might well do so!" burst from Kindelon, in a smothered voice. He rose and began to pace the floor. She had never seen him show such an excited manner; all his past volatility was as nothing to it. And yet he was plainly endeavoring to repress his excitement. "However," he proceeded, in a swift undertone, "this absurd slander need not concern you."

"You call it slander, as if you did not really think it so," she said.

He paused, facing her. "Are you going to let the venomous spite of an inferior win your respectful credence?" he questioned.

"We can't help believing certain things," said Pauline, measuredly, "no matter who utters them. I believed that Cora Dares was in love with you before I heard Miss Cragge say it. Or, at least, I seriously suspected as much. But of course this could not be a matter of the least concern to myself, until"--And here she paused very suddenly.

"Well?" he queried. "Until?"--

She appeared to reflect, for an instant, on the advisability of saying more. Then she lifted both hands, with a tossing, reckless motion. "Oh,"

she declared, "not until that woman had the audacity to accuse me of heartlessly standing in the path of Cora Dares's happiness--of alienating your regard from her--of using, moreover, a hatefully treacherous means toward this end--a means which I should despise myself if I ever dreamed of using!..." Pauline's voice had begun to tremble while she p.r.o.nounced the latter word.

"I understand," he said. His own voice was unsteady, though the anger had in great measure left it. To her surprise, he drew quite near her, and then seated himself close at her side. "If you did truly care for me," came his next sentence, "how little I should care what false witness that woman bore against the attachment! But since that day down at the Battery, when I wore my heart on my sleeve so daringly, I have made a resolve. It will be your fault, too, if I fail to keep it. And if I do fail, I shall fail most wretchedly. I--I shall make a sort of desperate leap at the barrier which now separates you and me."

"You say it will be my fault," was Pauline's response. The color had stolen into her cheeks before she framed her next sentence, and with a most clear glow. "How will it be my fault?"

"You must have given me encouragement," he said, "or at least something that I shall take for encouragement."

A silence followed. She was looking straight at the opposite wall; her cheeks were almost roseate now; a tearful light shone in her eyes as his sidelong look watched them. "Perhaps," she faltered, "you might take for encouragement what I did not mean as such."

"Ah, that is cruel!" he retorted.

She turned quickly; she put one hand on his arm. "I did not wish to be cruel!" she affirmed, gently and very feelingly.

It seemed to her, then, that the strong arm on which her hand rested underwent a faint tremor.

"It is easy for you to be cruel, where I am concerned."

"Easy!" she repeated, rapidly withdrawing her hand, and using a hurt intonation.

He leaned closer to her, then. "Yes," he said. "And you know why. I have told you of the difference between us. I have told you, because I am incessantly feeling it."

"There is a great difference," she answered, with a brisk little nod, as though of relief and gratification. "You have more intellect than I--far more. You are exceptional, capable, important. I am simply usual, strenuous, and quite of the general herd. That is the only difference which I will admit, although you have reproached me for practising a certain kind of masquerade--for secretly respecting the shadow and vanity called caste, birth, place. Yes," she went on, with a soft fervor that partook of exultation, while she turned her eyes upon his face and thought how extraordinary a face it was in its look of power and manliness, "I will accede to no other difference than this. You are above me, and I will not let you place yourself on my level!"

She felt his breath touch her cheek, then, as he replied: "You are so fine and high and pure that I think you could love only one whom you set above yourself--however mistakenly."

"My love must go with respect--always," she said.

"I am not worthy of your respect."

"Do you want me to credit Miss Cragge?"

"Did _she_ say that I was unworthy of it?"

"I--I cannot tell you what she said on that point. I would not tell you, though you begged me to do so."

She saw a bitter smile cross his face, but it lingered there merely an instant. "I can guess," he avowed, "that she tried to make you believe I do not really love you! It is so like her to do that."

"I--I will say nothing," stammered Pauline, once more averting her eyes.

Immediately afterward he had taken her hand in his own. She resisted neither its clasp nor its pressure.

"You know that I love you," she now heard him say, though the leap of her heart made his words sound far off, confused, unreal. "You must have known it days ago! There--my resolve is broken! But what can I do?

You have stooped downward from your high state by telling me that I am better than you. I am not better than you, Pauline! I am below you--all the world would say so except yourself. But you don't care for the world. Well, then I will despise it, too, because you bid me. I never respected what you represent until you made me respect it by making me love you. Now I respect and love it, both, because you are a part of it.

This is what your project, your ambition, has come to. Ah! how pitiful a failure! you're disgusted with your _salon_--you have been ill-treated, rebuffed, deceived! The little comedy is played to the end--and what remains? Only a poor newspaper-fellow, a sort of Irish adventuring journalist, who offers you his worthless heart to do what you choose with it! What _will_ you choose to do with it? I don't presume to advise, to demand--not even to ask! If you said you would marry Ralph Kindelon you would be making a horrible match! Don't let us forget that.

Don't let us forget how Mrs. Poughkeepsie would storm and scold!"

He had both her hands in both his own, now. She looked at him with eyes that sparkled and swam in tears. But though she did not withdraw her hands, she receded from him while brokenly saying:

"I--I don't care anything about Aunt Cynthia Poughkeepsie. But there--there is something else that I do care about. It--it seems to steal almost like a ghost between us--I can't tell why--I have no real reason to be troubled as I am--it is like a last and most severe distress wrought by this failure of mine with all those new people....

It is the thought that you have made Cora Dares believe that you meant to marry her."

Pauline's voice died away wretchedly, and she drooped her head as the final faint word was spoken. But she still let Kindelon hold her hands.

And his grasp tightened about them as she heard him answer:

"I suppose Cora Dares _may_ have believed that.... But, good G.o.d! am I so much to blame? I had never met _you_, Pauline. It was before I went to Ireland the last time--I never asked her to marry me--It was what they call a flirtation. Am I to be held to account for it? Hundreds of men have been foolish in this way before myself--Have you raised me so high only to dash me down?--Won't you speak? Won't you tell me that you forgive a dead fancy for the sake of a living love? Are you so cruel?--so exacting?"

"I am not cruel," she denied, lifting her eyes....

It was a good many minutes later that she said to him, with the tears standing on her flushed cheeks, and her fluttered voice in truly sad case,

"I--I am going to accept the Irish adventuring journalist (as--as he calls himself) for my husband, though he--he has never really asked me yet."

"He could not ask you," affirmed Kindelon, with by no means his first kiss. "Like every subject who wishes to marry a princess, he was forced to recognize a new matrimonial code!"

XII.

Pauline was surprised, during the several ensuing days, to find how greatly her indignation toward Miss Cragge had diminished. The new happiness which had come to her looked in a way resultant, as she reflected upon it, from that most trying and oppressive interview.

"I could almost find it in my heart to forgive her completely," she told Kindelon, with a beaming look.

"I wish that my forgiveness were to be secured as easily," replied Kindelon.

"Your forgiveness from whom?" asked Pauline, with a pretty start of amazement.

"Oh, you know. From your aunt, the vastly conservative Mrs.

Poughkeepsie, and her equally conservative daughter."