The Malefactor Part 41

How are you, Captain Kendrick? Come and tell me about the polo this afternoon. Sorry I can't offer you all chairs. This is an absurd box--it was only meant for two!"

"Come into ours," Lady Ruth said; "we have chairs for six, I think."

The Marchioness shook her head.

"I wish I had a millionaire in the family," she murmured. "All the same, I hate large parties. I am old-fashioned enough to think that two is a delightful number."

Lady Ruth laid her hand upon Wingrave's arm.

"A decided hint, Mr. Wingrave," she declared. "Come and let me introduce you to my sister. Our box is only a few yards off."

"I AM MISANTHROPOS, AND HATE MANKIND"

Wingrave had just come in from an early gallop. His pale cheeks were slightly flushed, and his eyes were bright. He had been riding hard to escape from disconcerting thoughts. He looked in at the study, and found Aynesworth with a ma.s.s of correspondence before him.

"Anything important?" he asked.

"Not yet," Aynesworth answered. "The letters marked private I have sent up to your room. By the bye, there was something I wanted to tell you."

Wingrave closed the door.

"Well?" he said.

"I was up in the gallery of the Opera House last night," Aynesworth said, "with a--person who saw you only once, soon after I first came to you--before America. You were some distance away, and yet--my friend recognized you."

Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.

"That, of course, is possible," he answered. "It really does not matter so very much unless they knew me--as Wingrave Seton!"

"My friend," Aynesworth said, "recognized you as Sir Wingrave Seton."

Wingrave frowned thoughtfully for a moment.

"Who was it?" he asked.

"A most unlikely person," Aynesworth remarked smiling. "Do you remember, when we went down to Tredowen just before we left for America, a little, long-legged, black-frocked child, whom we met in the gardens--the organist's daughter, you know?"

"What of her?" Wingrave asked.

"It was she who was with me," Aynesworth remarked. "It was she who saw you in the box with the Marchioness of Westchester."

Aynesworth was puzzled by the intentness with which Wingrave was regarding him. Impenetrable though the man was, Aynesworth, who had not yet lost his early trick of studying him closely, knew that, for some reason or other, his intelligence had proved disturbing.

"Have you then--kept up your acquaintance with this child?" he demanded.

Aynesworth shook his head.

"She is not a child any longer, but a very beautiful young woman," he said. "I met her again quite by accident. She is up in London, studying art at the studio of an old friend of mine who has a cla.s.s of girls. I called to see him the other afternoon, and recognized her."

"Your acquaintance," Wingrave remarked, "has progressed rapidly if she accepts your escort--to the gallery of the Opera!"

"It was scarcely like that," Aynesworth explained. "I met her and Mrs.

Tresfarwin on the way there, and asked to be allowed to accompany them.

Mrs. Tresfarwin was once your housekeeper, I think, at Tredowen."

"And did you solve the mystery of this relation of her father who turned up so opportunely?" Wingrave asked.

Aynesworth shook his head.

"She told me nothing about him," he answered.

Wingrave pa.s.sed on to his own room. His breakfast was on the table awaiting him, and a little pile of letters and newspapers stood by his plate. His servant, his head groom, and his chauffeur were there to receive their orders for the morning. About him were all the evidences of his well-ordered life. He sent both the men away and locked the door. It was half an hour before he touched either his breakfast or his letters....

He lunched at Westchester House in obedience to a somewhat imperative summons. There were other guests there, whom, however, he outstayed. As soon as they were alone, his hostess touched him on the arm and led him to her own room.

"At last!" she exclaimed, with an air of real relief. "There, sit down opposite to me, please--I want to watch your face."

She was a little paler than usual, and he noticed that she had avoided talking much to him at luncheon time. And yet he thought that he had never seen her more beautiful. Something in her face had altered. He could not tell what it was for he was not a man of much experience as regarded her s.e.x. Yet, in a vague sort of way, he understood the change. A certain part of the almost insolent quietness, the complete self-a.s.surance of her manner, had gone. She was a little more like an ordinary woman!

"Lady Ruth proved herself an excellent tactician last night," she remarked. "She has given me an exceedingly uncomfortable few hours. For you, well for you it was a respite, wasn't it?"

"I don't know that I should call it exactly that," he answered thoughtfully.

She looked at him steadfastly, almost wistfully.

"Well," she said, "I am not going to make excuses for myself. But the things which one says naturally enough when the emotions provoke them sound crude enough in cold blood and colder daylight. We women are creatures of mood, you know. I was feeling a little lonely and a little tired last night, and the music stole away my common sense."

"I understand," he murmured. "All that you said shall be forgotten."

"Then you do not understand," she answered, smiling at him. "What I said I do not wish to be forgotten. Only--just at that moment, it sounded natural enough--and today--I think that I am a little ashamed."

He rose from his seat. Her eyes leaped up to his expectantly, and the color streamed into her cheeks. But he only stood by her side. He did nothing to meet the half-proffered embrace.

"Dear Lady Emily," he said, "all the kind things that you said were spoken to a stranger. You did not know me. I did not mean anyone to know me. It is you who have commanded the truth. You must have it. I am not the person I seem to be. I am not the person to whom words such as yours should have been spoken. Even my name is an a.s.sumed one. I should prefer to leave it at that--if you are content."

"I am not content," she answered quietly; "I must hear more."

He bowed.

"I am a man," he said, "who spent ten years in prison, the ten best years of my life. A woman sent me there--a woman swore my liberty away to save her reputation. I was never of a forgiving disposition, I was never an amiably disposed person. I want you to understand this. Any of the ordinary good qualities with which the average man may be endowed, and which I may have possessed, are as dead in me as h.e.l.l fire could burn them. You have spoken of me as of a man who failed to find a sufficient object in life. You were wrong. I have an object, and I do my best to live up to it. I hate the whole world of men and women who laughed their way through life whilst I suffered--tortures. I hate the woman who sent me there. I have no heart, nor any sense of pity. Now perhaps you can understand my life and the manner of it."

Her hands were clasped to the side of her head. Something of horror had stolen into the steadfast gaze with which she was still regarding him.

Yet there were other things there which puzzled him.

"This--is terrible!" she murmured. "Then you are not--Mr. Wingrave at all?"