The Guarded Heights Part 87

He fingered a gaudy handkerchief. He thrust it in his pocket, drew it forth again, folded it carefully with his pudgy hands.

"Don't think I've ever ceased to regret----" he started rather pitifully.

After a moment's absorbed scrutiny of George he went on.

"If she had picked somebody like you I wouldn't have minded. Papa Blodgett would have given you both his blessing."

So they had all guessed something! George questioned uneasily if Blodgett's suspicions had lived during the course of his own unfortunate romance, and he was sorrier than ever he had had to help destroy that.

He got rid of Blodgett and refused to see any one else, but he had to answer the telephone, for that would almost certainly be Betty's means of communication. Each time the pleasant bell tinkled he seized the receiver, and each time cut short whatever masculine worries reached him. The uneven pounding of the ticker punctuated his suspense. It was a feverish morning in the market, but not once did he rise to glance at the tape which streamed neglected into the basket.

It was after one o'clock when he s.n.a.t.c.hed the receiver from the hook again with a hopeless premonition of another disappointment. Then he heard Betty's voice, scarcely more than an anxious whisper "George!"

"Yes, yes, Betty."

"My car will be somewhere between Altman's and Tiffany's at two o'clock, as near the corner of Thirty-fifth Street as they'll let me get. Lambert knows. It's all right."

"But, Betty----"

"Just be there," she said, and must have hung up.

He glanced at his watch. He could start now. He hurried from the building, but there was no point in haste. He had plenty of time, too much time; and Betty hadn't said he would see Sylvia; hadn't given him time to ask; but she must have arranged an interview, else why should she care to see him at all, why her manner of a conspirator?

He reached the rendezvous well ahead of time, but he recognized Betty's car just beyond the corner, and saw her wave to him anxiously. He stepped in and sat at her side. She laughed nervously.

"I guessed you would be a little ahead," she said as the car commenced to crawl north.

"Am I to see Sylvia?"

Betty nodded.

"Just once. This noon, before I telephoned, she acknowledged that she wanted to see you--to talk to you for the last time. That's the way she put it."

Betty smiled sceptically.

"You know I don't believe anything of the sort."

"What do you think can be done?" George asked.

She didn't suggest anything, merely repeating her faith, going on while she looked at George curiously.

"So all the time, George--and I didn't really guess, but I might have known you would. I can remember now that day at Princeton when I asked you about her dog, and your anxiety one night at Josiah's when you wanted to know if she was going to be married--oh, plenty of hints now.

George! Why did you let it go so far?"

"Couldn't help myself, Betty."

She looked at him helplessly.

"And what have you done to her?"

"If you can't guess----" George said.

Betty smiled reminiscently.

"Perhaps I can guess. You would do just that, George, when there was nothing else."

"You don't blame me?" he asked. "You don't ask, as Lambert did, why I waited so long?"

She shook her head.

"I'm sure," she said, "when you came last night you saw a Sylvia none of us had ever met before. Don't you think it had come upon her all at once that she was no longer Sylvia Planter, that in defeating you she had destroyed herself? If that is so, she has every bit of sympathy I'm capable of, and we must think first of all of her. The pride's still there, but quite a different thing. She's never known fear before, George, and now she's afraid, terribly afraid, most of all, I think, of herself."

George counted the corners, was relieved when beyond Fiftieth Street the traffic thinned and they went faster. He took Betty's hand, and found that the touch steadied and encouraged, because at last her fingers seemed to reach his mind again.

"Betty! Do you think she cares at all?"

"I'm prejudiced," Betty laughed, "but I think the harder she'd been the more she's cared; but she wouldn't talk about you except to say she would see you for a minute this once. Lambert's lunching with Dolly."

"We are conspirators," George said, "and I don't like it, but I must see her once."

They drew up at the curb, got out, and entered the hall. The house was peculiarly without sound. George glanced at the entrance to the room where he had found Sylvia last night.

"I think she's in Mr. Planter's study," Betty said. "He hasn't come downstairs yet."

She led him through the library to a small, square room--a quiet and comfortable book-lined retreat where Old Planter had been accustomed to supplement his work down town. George looked eagerly around, but the light wasn't very good, and he didn't at first see Sylvia.

"Sylvia!" Betty called softly. "I've brought George."

XXI

Almost before George realized it Betty was gone and the door was closed.

"Sylvia!"

Her low voice reached him from a large chair opposite the single, leaded, opaque window.

"I'm over here----"

Yes, there was fear in her enunciation, as if she groped through shadowy and hazardous places. It cautioned him. With a choked feeling, a racking effort after repression, he walked quietly around and stared down at her.

She looked up once quickly, then glanced away. He was grateful for her colour, but the fear was in her face, too, and the pride, as Betty had said, but a transformed pride that he couldn't quite understand. She lay back in the large chair, her head to one side resting against the protruding arm. Her eyes were bright with tears she had shed or wanted to shed.

"Please sit down."

The ring of exasperated contempt and challenge had gone from her voice.

He hadn't known it could stir him so. He drew up a chair and sat close to her.

"You are not angry about what I did last night?" he whispered.