The Incomplete Amorist Part 43

The other woman was not listening. "Engaged to him!"--The words sang deliciously, disquietingly in her ears.

"But who said I was engaged to him?"

"He did, of course. He isn't ashamed of it--if you are."

"He told you that!"

"Yes. Now aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Country-bred Betty, braced by the straightforward directness of Miss Voscoe, and full of the nervous energy engendered by a half-understood trouble, had routed, for a moment, the woman of the world. But only for a moment. Then Lady St. Craye, unable to estimate the gain or loss of the encounter, pulled herself together to make good her retreat.

"Yes," she said, with her charming smile. "I am ashamed of myself. I _was_ jealous--I own it. But I shouldn't have shown it as I did if I'd known the sort of girl you are. Come, forgive me! Can't you understand--and forgive?"

"It was all my fault." The generosity of Betty hastened to meet what it took to be the generosity of the other. "Forgive me. I won't see him again at all--if you don't want me to."

"No, no." Even at that moment, in one illuminating flash, Lady St.

Craye saw the explications that must follow the announcement of that renunciatory decision. "No, no. If you do that I shall feel sure that you don't forgive me for being so silly. Just let everything go on--won't you? And please, please don't tell him anything about--about to-day."

"How could I?" asked Betty.

"But promise you won't. You know--men are so vain. I should hate him to know"--she hesitated and then finished the sentence with fine art--"to know--how much I care."

"Of course you care," said Betty downrightly. "You ought to care. It would be horrid of you if you didn't."

"But I don't, _now_. Now I _know_ you, Miss Desmond. I understand so well--and I like to think of his being with you."

Even to Betty's ears this did not ring quite true.

"You like--?" she said.

"I mean I quite understand now. I thought--I don't know what I thought. You're so pretty, you know. And he has had so very many--love-affairs."

"He hasn't one with me," said Betty briefly.

"Ah, you're still angry. And no wonder. Do forgive me, Miss Desmond, and let's be friends."

Betty's look as she gave her hand was doubtful. But the hand was given.

"And you'll keep my poor little secret?"

"I should have thought you would have been proud for him to know how much you care."

"Ah, my dear," Lady St. Craye became natural for an instant under the transfiguring influence of her real thoughts as she spoke them, "my dear, don't believe it! When a man's sure of you he doesn't care any more. It's while he's not quite sure that he cares."

"I don't think that's so always," said Betty.

"Ah, believe me, there are 'more ways of killing a cat than choking it with b.u.t.ter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a lover of your own--or perhaps you have now?"

"Perhaps I have." Betty stood on guard with a steady face.

"Well, when you have--or if you have--remember never to let him be quite sure. It's the only way."

The two parted, with a mutually kindly feeling that surprised one as much as the other. Lady St. Craye drove home contrasting bitterly the excellence of her maxims with the inept.i.tude of her practice. She had let him know that she cared. And he had left her. That was two years ago. And, now that she had met him again, when she might have played the part she had recommended to that chit with the long hair--the part she knew to be the wise one--she had once more suffered pa.s.sion to overcome wisdom, and had shown him that she loved him. And he had kissed her.

She blushed in the dusk of her carriage for the shame of that kiss.

But he had told that girl that he was engaged to her.

A delicious other flush replaced the blush of shame. Why should he have done that unless he really meant--? In that case the kiss was nothing to blush about. And yet it was. She knew it.

She had time to think in the days that followed, days that brought Temple more than once to her doors, but Vernon never.

Betty left alone let down her damp hair and tried to resume her drawing. But it would not do. The emotion of the interview was too recent. Her heart was beating still with anger, and resentment, and other feelings less easily named.

Vernon was to come to fetch her at seven. She would not face him. Let him go and dine with the woman he belonged to!

Betty went out at half-past six. She would not go to Garnier's, nor to Thirion's. That was where he would look for her.

She walked steadily on, down the boulevard. She would dine at some place she had never been to before. A sickening vision of that first night in Paris swam before her. She saw again the Cafe d'Harcourt, heard the voices of the women who had spoken to Paula, saw the eyes of the men who had been the companions of those women. In that rout the face of Temple shone--clear cut, severe. She remembered the instant resentment that had thrilled her at his protective att.i.tude, remembered it and wondered at it a little. She would not have felt that now. She knew her Paris better than she had done then.

And with the thought, the face of Temple came towards her out of the crowd. He raised his hat in response to her frigid bow, and had almost pa.s.sed her, when she spoke on an impulse that surprised herself.

"Oh--Mr. Temple!"

He stopped and turned.

"I was looking for a place to dine. I'm tired of Garnier's and Thirion's."

He hesitated. And he, too, remembered the night at the Cafe d'Harcourt, when she had disdained his advice and gone back to take the advice of Paula.

He caught himself a.s.suring himself that a man need not be ashamed to risk being snubbed--making a fool of himself even--if he could do any good. So he said: "You know I have horrid old-fashioned ideas about women," and stopped short.

"Don't you know of any good quiet place near here?" said Betty.

"I think women ought to be taken care of. But some of them--Miss Desmond, I'm so afraid of you--I'm afraid of boring you--"

Remorse stirred her.

"You've always been most awfully kind," she said warmly. "I've often wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about that first time I saw you--I'm not sorry for what I _did_," she added in haste; "I can never be anything but glad for that. But I'm sorry I seemed ungrateful to you."

"Now you give me courage," he said. "I do know a quiet little place quite near here. And, as you haven't any of your friends with you, won't you take pity on me and let me dine with you?"

"You're sure you're not giving up some nice engagement--just to--to be kind to me?" she asked. And the forlornness of her tone made him almost forget that he had half promised to join a party of Lady St.

Craye's.

"I should like to come with you--I should like it of all things," he said; and he said it convincingly.

They dined together, and the dinner was unexpectedly pleasant to both of them. They talked of England, of wood, field and meadow, and Betty found herself talking to him of the garden at home and of the things that grew there, as she had talked to Paula, and as she had never talked to Vernon.