The Powers and Maxine Part 4

"Of course I am!" I exclaimed, smiling, though I had a sickening wrench of the heart. "And I suppose you forgot all his faults and failings, and said he could have you, Algiers or no Algiers."

"I don't believe he has all those faults and failings you were talking about this evening," said Di, with her cheeks very pink. "He may have flirted a little at one time. Women have spoiled him a lot. But--but he _does_ love me, Lisa."

"And he did love Maxine!" I laughed.

"He didn't. He never loved her. I--you see, you put such horrid thoughts into my head that--that I just mentioned her name when he said to-night--oh, when he said the usual things, about never having cared seriously for anyone until he saw me. Only--it seems treacherous to call them '_usual_' because--when you love a man you feel that the things he says can never have been said before, in the same way, by any other man to any other woman."

"Only perhaps by the same man to another woman," I mocked at her, trying to act as if I were teasing in fun.

"Lisa, you _can_ be hateful sometimes!" she cried.

"It's only for your good, if I'm hateful now," I said. "I don't want to have you disappointed, when it's too late. I want you to keep your eyes open, and see exactly where you're going. It's the truest thing ever said that 'love is blind.' You can't deny that you're in love with Ivor Dundas."

"I don't deny it," she answered, with a proud air which would, I suppose, have made Ivor want to kiss her.

"And you didn't deny it to him?"

"No, I didn't. But thanks to you, I put him upon a kind of probation. I wish I hadn't, now. I wish I'd shown that I trusted him entirely. I know he deserves to be trusted; and to-morrow I shall tell him--"

"I don't think I should commit myself any further till day after to-morrow," said I drily. "Indeed, you couldn't if you wanted to, unless you wrote or wired. You won't see him to-morrow."

"Yes, I shall," she contradicted me, opening those big hazel eyes of hers, that looked positively black with excitement. "He's going to the d.u.c.h.ess of Glasgow's bazaar, because I said I should most likely be there: and I will go--"

"But he won't."

"How can you know anything about it?"

"I do know, everything. And I'll tell you what I know, if you'll promise me two things."

"What things?"

"That you won't ask me how I found out, and that you'll swear never to give me away to anybody."

"Of course I wouldn't 'give you away,' as you call it. But--I'm not sure I want you to tell me. I have faith in Ivor. I'd rather not hear stories behind his back."

"Oh, very well, then, go to the d.u.c.h.ess's to-morrow," I snapped, "and wear your prettiest frock to please Ivor, when just about that time he'll be arriving in Paris to keep a very particular engagement with Maxine de Renzie."

Di grew suddenly pale, and her eyes looked violet instead of black. "I don't believe he's going to Paris!" she exclaimed.

"I know he's going. And I know he's going especially to see Maxine."

"It can't be. He told me to-night he wouldn't cross the street to see her. I--I made it a condition--that if he found he cared enough for her to want to see her again, he must go, of course: but he must give up all thought of me. If I'm to reign, I must reign alone."

"Well, then, on thinking it over, he probably did find that he wanted to see her."

"No. For he loved me just as much when we parted, only half an hour ago."

"Yet at least two hours ago he'd arranged a meeting with Maxine for to-morrow afternoon."

"You're dreaming."

"I was never wider awake: or if I'm dreaming, you can dream the same dream if you'll be at Victoria Station to-morrow, or rather this morning, when the boat train goes out at 10 o'clock."

"I will be there!" cried Di, changing from red to white. "And you shall be with me, to see that you're wrong. I know you will be wrong."

"That's an engagement," said I. "At 10 o'clock, Victoria Station, just you and I, and n.o.body else in the house the wiser. If I'm right, and Ivor's there, shall you think it wise to give him up?"

"He might be obliged to go to Paris, suddenly, for some business reason, without meaning to call on Maxine de Renzie--in which case he'd probably write me. But--at the station, I shall ask him straight out--that is, if he's there, as I'm sure he won't be--whether he intends to see Mademoiselle de Renzie. If he says no, I'll believe him. If he says yes--"

"You'll tell him all is over between you?"

"He'd know that without my telling, after our talk last night."

"And whatever happens, you will say nothing about having heard Maxine's name from me?"

"Nothing," Di answered. And I knew she would keep her word.

IVOR DUNDAS' POINT OF VIEW

CHAPTER IV

IVOR TRAVELS TO PARIS

It is rather a startling sensation for a man to be caught suddenly by the nape of the neck, so to speak, and pitched out of heaven down to--the other place.

But that was what happened to me when I arrived at Victoria Station, on my way to Paris.

I had taken my ticket and hurried on to the platform without too much time to spare (I'd been warned not to risk observation by being too early) when I came face to face with the girl whom, at any other time, I should have liked best to meet: whom at that particular time I least wished to meet: Diana Forrest.

"The Imp"--Lisa Drummond--was with her: but I saw only Di at first--Di, looking a little pale and hara.s.sed, but beautiful as always. Only last night I had told her that Paris had no attractions for me. I had said that I didn't care to see Maxine de Renzie: yet here I was on the way to see her, and here was Di discovering me in the act of going to see, her.

Of course I could lie; and I suppose some men, even men of honour, would think it justifiable as well as wise to lie in such a case, when explanations were forbidden. But I couldn't lie to a girl I loved as I love Diana Forrest. It would have sickened me with life and with myself to do it: and it was with the knowledge in my mind that I could not and would not lie, that I had to greet her with a conventional "Good morning."

"Are you going out of town?" I asked, with my hat off for her and for the Imp, whose strange little weazened face I now saw looking over my tall love's shoulders. It had never before struck me that the Imp was like a cat; but suddenly the resemblance struck me--something in the poor little creature's expression, it must have been, or in her greenish grey eyes which seemed at that moment to concentrate all the knowledge of old and evil things that has ever come into the world since the days of the early Egyptians--when a cat was worshipped.

"No, I'm not going out of town," Di answered. "I came here to meet you, in case you should be leaving by this train, and I brought Lisa with me."

"Who told you I was leaving?" I asked, hoping for a second or two that the Foreign Secretary had confided to her something of his secret--guessing ours, perhaps, and that my unexpected, inexplicable absence might injure me with her.

"I can't tell you," she answered. "I didn't believe you would go; even though I got your letter by the eight o'clock post this morning."

"I'm glad you got that," I said. "I posted it soon after I left you last night."