The Hoyden Part 90

"Oh, let us leave _hearts_ out of the discussion," cries t.i.ta scornfully. "And, indeed, why should we have any discussions? Why need we talk to each other at all? This interview"-- clenching her handkerchief into a ball--"what has it done for us? It has only made us both wretched!" She takes a step nearer to him. "Do--do promise me you will not seek another."

"I cannot promise you that."

"No?" She turns back again. "Well--go away now, at all events," says she, sighing.

"Not until I have said what is on my mind," says Rylton, with determination.

"Well, say it"--frowning.

"I will! You are my wife, and I am your husband, and I think it is your _duty_ to live with me."

She looks at him for a long time, as if thinking.

"I'll tell you what you think," says she slowly, "that it will add to your respectability in the eyes of your world to have your wife living in _your_ house, and not in Margaret's."

"I don't expect to be generously judged by you," says he. "But even as you put it there is sense in it. If our world----"

"Yours! yours!" interrupts she angrily--that old wound had always rankled. "It is not my world! I have nothing to do with it. I do not belong to it. Your mother showed me that, even so long ago as when we were first"--there is a little perceptible hesitation--"married".

_"Hang_ my mother!" says Rylton violently. "I tell you my world is your world, and if not--well, then I have no desire to belong to it.

The question is, t.i.ta, will you consent to forget--and--and forgive--and"--with a sudden plunge--"make it up with me?"

He would have taken her hand here, but she slips adroitly behind a small table.

"Say it is for respectability's sake, if you like, that I ask you to return to me," goes on Rylton, a little daunted, however, by her determined entrenchment; "though it is not. Still----"

She stops him.

"It is no use," says she. "Don't go on. I cannot. I _will_ not. I,"

her lips quiver slightly--"I was _too_ unhappy with you. And I should always think of----" Her voice dies away.

Rylton is thinking, too, of last night, and that terrible interview with Marian. A feeling of hatred towards her grows within him. She had played with him--killed all that was best in him, and then flung him aside. She had let him go for the moment--only to return and spoil whatever good the world had left him. Her face rises before him pleading, seductive; and here is the other face--angry, scornful. Oh, dear little angry face! How fair, how pure, and how beloved!

"I tell you," says he, breaking out vehemently, "that all that is at an end--if I ever loved her." He forgets everything now, and, catching her hands, holds them tightly in his own. "Give me another trial," entreats he.

"No, no!" She speaks as if choking, but for all that she draws her hands out of his. "It would be madness. You would tire. We should tire of each other in a week--where there is no love. No, no!"

"You refuse, then?"

"I refuse!"

"t.i.ta----"

She turns upon him pa.s.sionately.

"I _won't_ listen. It is useless. You"--a sob breaks from her--"why _don't_ you go!" she cries a little wildly.

"This is not good-bye," says he desperately. "You will let me come again? Margaret, I know, receives on Sundays. _Say_ I may come then."

"Yes."

She gives the permission faintly, and with evident reluctance. She lifts her eyes, and makes a gesture towards the door.

"Oh, I am going," says Rylton bitterly. He goes a step or two away from her, and then pauses as if loath to leave her.

"You might at least shake hands with me," says he.

She hesitates--then lays a cold little hand in his. He too hesitates, then, stooping, presses his lips warmly, lingeringly to it.

In another moment he is gone.

t.i.ta stands motionless, listening to his departing footsteps. For a while she struggles with herself, as if determined to overcome the strange emotion that is threatening to master her. Then she gives way, and, flinging herself into an armchair, breaks into a pa.s.sion of tears.

Margaret, coming presently into the room, sees her, and going to her, kneels down beside the chair and takes her into her arms.

"Oh, Margaret!" cries t.i.ta. "Oh, Meg! Meg! And I was so rude to you!

But to see him--to see him again----"

"My poor darling!" says Margaret, pressing the girl to her with infinite tenderness.

CHAPTER XXVI.

HOW SOME OLD FRIENDS REAPPEAR AGAIN; AND HOW SOME NEWS IS TOLD; AND HOW MAURICE MAKES ANOTHER EFFORT TO WIN HIS CASE.

"Just been to see her," says Mr. Gower, who has selected the snuggest chair in Margaret's drawing-room, and is now holding forth from its cushioned depths with a radiant smile upon his brow. "She's staying with the Tennants. They always had a hankering after Mrs.

Bethune."

"Fancy Marian's being with _anyone_ when Tessie is in town!" says Margaret. "Captain Marryatt, that is a wretchedly uncomfortable chair. Come and sit here."

"Oh, thanks! I'm all right," says Marryatt, who would have died rather than give up his present seat. It has a full command of the door. It is plain, indeed, to all present that he is expecting someone, and that someone Mrs. Chichester--his mistaken, if honest, infatuation for that lean young woman being still as ardent as of yore.

Minnie Hescott, who is talking to t.i.ta, conceals a smile behind her fan.

"What! haven't you heard about her and Marian?" asks Gower, leaning towards his hostess. "Why, you must be out of the swim altogether not to have heard that. There's a split there. A regular cuc.u.mber coldness! They don't speak now."

"An exaggeration, surely," says Margaret. "I saw lady Rylton yesterday and---- How d'ye do, colonel Neilson?"

There is the faintest blush on Margaret's cheek as she rises to receive her warrior.

"I hardly expected you to-day; I thought you were going down to Twickenham."

"What an awful story!" says Gower, letting her hear his whisper under pretence of picking up her handkerchief.

"Monday will do for that," says Neilson. "But Monday might not do for you. I decided not to risk the Sunday. By-the-bye, I have something to say to you, presently, if you can spare me a moment."