The Inner Shrine Part 36

"Reggie Bradford is bringing her--if you want to know."

"By the ten-five train?"

"No; in his motor."

"How very convenient these motors are! And has she no companion but Mr.

Bradford?"

"She hasn't any companion at all. She doesn't even know that the man driving the machine is Reggie. He thought that, going very slowly, as he promised to do, to avoid all chances of accident, they might arrive by eleven."

"And Dorothea was to be alone here with you two men?"

"Well, you see, we are to be married as soon as she arrives. We go straight from here to the clergyman's house; he's waiting for us; in ten minutes' time I shall be her husband; and then everything will be all right."

"How cleverly you've arranged it!"

"I had to make my arrangements pretty close," Carli explained, in a tone of pride. "There were a good many difficulties to overcome, but I did it. Dorothea has had no trouble at all, and will have none; that is", he added, with a sigh, at the recollection of what Diane had just said, "as far as getting down here is concerned. She went to tea at the Belfords', and on coming out she found a motor waiting for her at the door. She walked into it without asking questions and sat down; and that's all.

She doesn't know whose motor it is, or where she's going, except that she is being taken toward me. I provided her with everything. She's got nothing to do but sit still till she gets here, when she will be married almost before she knows she has arrived."

"It's certainly most romantic; and if one has to do such things, they couldn't be done better."

"Well, one has to--sometimes."

"Yes; so I see."

"What do you suppose Derek Pruyn will say?" he asked, after a brief pause.

"I haven't the least idea what he'll say--in these circ.u.mstances. Of course, I always knew--But there's no use speaking about that now."

"Speaking about what now?" he asked, sharply.

"Oh, nothing! One must be with Mr. Pruyn constantly--live in his house--to understand him. You can always count on his being kinder than he seems at first, or on the surface. During the last months I was with Dorothea I could see plainly enough that in the end she would get her way."

He paused abruptly in his walk and confronted her.

"Then, for Heaven's sake," he demanded, "why didn't you tell me that before?"

"You never asked me. I couldn't go around shouting it out for nothing.

Besides, it was only my opinion, in which, after all, I am quite likely to be wrong."

"But quite likely to be right."

"I suppose so. Naturally, I should have told you," she went on, humbly, "if I had thought that you wanted to hear; but how was I to know that?

One doesn't talk about other people's private affairs unless one is invited. In any case, it doesn't matter now. A man who can cut the Gordian knot as you can doesn't care to hear that there's a way by which it might have been unravelled."

"I'm not so sure about that. There are cases in which the longest way round is the shortest way home, and if--"

"But I didn't suppose you would consider so cautious a route as that."

"I shouldn't for myself; but, you see, I have to think of Dorothea."

"But I've already told you that there's no occasion for that. If Dorothea has made her choice with her eyes open--"

"Good Lord!" he cried, impatiently, "you talk as if all I wanted was to get her into a noose."

"Well, isn't it? Perhaps I'm stupid, but I thought the whole reason for bringing her down here was because--"

"Because we thought there was no other way," he finished, in a tone of exasperation. "But if there _is_ another way--"

"I'm not at all sure that there is," she retorted, with a touch of asperity, to keep pace with his rising emotion. "Don't begin to think that because I said Mr. Pruyn was coming round to it he's obliged to do it."

"No; but if there was a chance--"

"Of course there's always that. But what then?"

"Well, then--there'd be no particular reason for rushing the thing to-night. But I don't know, though," he continued, with a sudden change of tone; "we're here, and perhaps we might as well go through with it. All I want is her happiness; and since she can't be happy in her own home--"

Diane laughed softly, and he stopped once more in his walk to look down at her.

"There's one thing you ought to understand about Dorothea," she said, with a little air of amus.e.m.e.nt. "You know how fond I am of her, and that I wouldn't criticise her for the world. Now, don't be offended, and don't glower at me like that, for I _must_ say it. Dorothea isn't unhappy because she hasn't a good home, or because she has a stern father, or because she can't marry you. She's unhappy because she isn't getting her own way, and for no other reason whatever. She's the dearest, sweetest, most loving little girl on earth, but she has a will like steel. Whatever she sets her mind on, great or small, that she is determined to do, and when it's done she doesn't care any more about it.

When I was with her, I never crossed her in anything. I let her do what she was bent on doing, right up to the point where she saw, herself, that she didn't want to. If her father would only treat her like that, she--"

"She wouldn't be coming down here to-night. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

"Oh no! How can you say so?"

"I can say so, because I think there's a good deal of truth in it. I'm not without some glimmering of insight into her character myself; and to be quite frank, it was seeing her set her pretty white teeth and clinch her fist and stamp her foot, to get her way over nothing at all, that first made me fall in love with her."

"Then I will say no more. I see you know her as well as I do."

"Yes, I know her," he said, confidently, marching on again. "I don't think there are many corners of her character into which I haven't seen."

Several remarks arose to Diane's lips, but she repressed them, and they continued their walk in silence. During the three or four turns they took, side by side, up and down the terrace, she divined the course his thought was taking, and her speech was with his inner rather than his outer man. Suddenly he stopped, with one of his jerky pauses, and when he spoke his voice took on a boyish quality that made it appealing.

"Mrs. Eveleth, do you know what I think? I think that you and I have come down here on what looks like a fool's business. If it wasn't for leaving Dorothea here with Reggie Bradford, I'd put you in the motor and we'd travel back to New York as fast as tires could take us."

"Upon my word," she confessed, "you make me almost wish we could do it.

But, of course, it isn't possible. There must be some one here to meet Dorothea--and explain. I could do that if you liked."

"Oh no!" he exclaimed, with a new change of mind; "I should look as if I were showing the white feather."

"On the contrary, you'd look as if you knew what it was to be a man."

"And Derek Pruyn might hold out against me in the end."

"It would be time enough, even then, to do--what you meant to do to-night; and I'd help you."

He hesitated still, till another thought occurred to him.