The Phantom Lover Part 26

Micky's restraint broke its bonds; if he had died for it he could not have checked the words that rushed to his lips.

"I detest the fellow!" he said. "He's a beastly outsider!"

He dared not look at her. He held his breath, waiting for the storm to break, but if he had lost his self-control she kept hers admirably.

"Really," she said. Her voice was a little breathless, but quite calm.

"What does a man mean when he calls another man--such a name?"

Her face was quite colourless, even to the lips, and her hands were clenched in the shabbiness of the cheap little m.u.f.f she carried.

He blunderingly tried to make amends.

"I ought not to have said that, just because he's not the sort of man I care about," he said stammeringly. "He's quite all right--it all depends from what point of view you regard him. I hope you will forget that I said that, Miss Shepstone. It--it was unpardonable."

"It's a matter of complete indifference to me what you say about--Mr.

Ashton," she told him.

She stopped. They had been walking along together.

"Which way are you going?" she asked.

Micky flushed up to his eyes; he knew this was a dismissal.

"I was coming along to see June," he said. "I hoped you would allow me to walk along with you--if I am not intruding."

Esther forced a smile, but her lips felt stiff.

"Oh, but I am not going back," she said. Her voice sounded as if it were cut in ice. "So I won't detain you. Good-bye."

She turned and left him, walking quickly away again in the direction from which she had just come.

Her eyes were smarting with tears that had to be restrained.

"How dare he--oh, how dare he?" she asked herself pa.s.sionately. "What does he know about Raymond?"

She could not trust herself to go back home. She walked about in the cold till she was tired out. She wanted to be sure that Micky would have left Elphinstone Road before she got there. She wondered if June knew the Ashtons too. She probably did, as Micky Mellowes knew them.

They were both of Raymond's own world, these two. It was only she, who loved him best, who was outside the magic circle of his friends.

It was nearly supper time when she got in. She paused for a moment in the hall and looked anxiously at the rows of coats and hats hanging there. She thought she would know Micky's if she saw them there. She forgot that he might have taken them up to June's room. She turned away with a little sigh.

At the foot of the stairs she met young Harley. He coloured sensitively when he saw her and stood aside for her to pa.s.s.

Esther flushed too. She wondered what he thought of her note refusing the theatre. With sudden impulse she spoke--

"I hope you are not angry with me, Mr. Harley, but--but perhaps you do not know that I am engaged to be married, and so ... so I don't think I should accept invitations from any one else, though--though it was kind of you to ask me," she added.

"I should have been delighted if you could have come," he said. "But, of course, if your fiance would not care about it----" He broke off as if there was nothing more to be said.

Esther wondered if Raymond really would mind; at first he had been very jealous, and could not bear her to speak to another man, but latterly--she hated it, because she could not forget that once he had told her she could marry a man with money if she only played her cards carefully--the man who had said that seemed a different personality altogether from the man whose letters she had only lived for during the last fortnight.

Was she mean and unforgiving that she continually found herself remembering the quarrels and scenes they had had? She wanted so earnestly to forget them; she went up to June's room with dragging steps.

The door of the room opened before she reached the landing, and June came out.

"I knew it was you," she said. "Poor soul! how tired you sound.

Another day of miserable failure, I suppose. Never mind, come and sit down in the warm, and you'll soon forget it."

Esther laughed rather shamefacedly.

"It's been a day of success, strange to relate," she said. "But I'm tired, dead tired--I must have walked miles." She suddenly remembered Micky; she looked round with--a quick suspicion. "Have you been alone all the afternoon?" she asked.

"Yes, quite alone," June laughed. "Who did you expect to find here, pray?" she demanded.

"n.o.body--I only wondered if you had had any visitors."

"I might have known it wasn't the truth that he was coming here," she told herself vexedly.

"Well, and what about the success?" June asked; she was sitting on the hearthrug stroking Charlie. "You don't mean to say that the old dear at the agency really had something to offer you this time?"

Esther nodded.

"Yes, and she's desperately anxious for me to take it, too. It's quite a good offer, but it means leaving here and living in; and I don't believe I want to leave here," she added ruefully.

June looked dismayed.

"I shan't let you go," she said promptly. "Just as we are settling down so cosily." She put her white hands over her ears. "No, I don't want to hear another thing about it, if that's it," she said. "I shan't listen--write and refuse it--write and refuse it at once."

Esther laughed; she pulled June's hands down and held them firmly.

"Tell me," she said. "Do you know any people named Ashton?"

She was longing to find out if June did know them; it seemed such a lifetime since she had seen Raymond or spoken to him, she was hungry to hear him spoken of, even if only by this woman who probably had merely known him as an ordinary acquaintance.

"Ashton!" June wrinkled up her nose. "I know some Ashtons who live in Brayanstone Square," she said at last. "A mother and son. A very handsome woman she is, with white hair, she has a sort of grande dame look about her--the sort of woman you can imagine in a powdered wig and a crinoline, curtsying to the queen." She scrambled up, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing a paper fan from the shelf, swept Esther a graceful curtsy to ill.u.s.trate her meaning.

But Esther was too much in earnest to be amused.

"It must be the same Mrs. Ashton," she said eagerly. "This is her card--she gave it to me to-day--Mrs. Raymond Ashton."

June glanced at the card and nodded briskly.

"Yes, it's the same. I don't know her frightfully well; she's rather reserved, too; but I admire her immensely--well, go on."

"She wants me to go to her as a sort of companion--she has offered me fifty pounds a year."

June whistled.

"Not bad, is it? But you'll refuse, of course?"