The Puritans Part 61

"Oh, it is not that I am tired of your society," poor Maurice put in eagerly.

"If I were a man," his hostess went on, "I never would let a woman see that I minded how she treated me. You'd soon have her coming down from her high horse if you showed her that you didn't care."

Maurice flushed painfully. It was impossible for him to talk to Mrs.

Wilson about his feeling for Berenice.

"I am afraid that I had better go," he said, with eyes abased.

She regarded him with a mixture of impatience and amus.e.m.e.nt struggling in her face.

"By all means go," she retorted. "I'll tell Patrick to be at the door in time to take you to the three o'clock train."

She swept away rather brusquely, leaving him disconsolate and uneasy.

He felt that he had bungled matters; but before he had time to consider Berenice appeared, and joined him on the piazza.

"I am sent by Mrs. Wilson," she announced, "to ask you to stay."

"You take some pains to clear yourself from the suspicion of having any interest in the matter."

"'I am only a messenger,'" she quoted saucily, seating herself on the rail of the piazza in the sunshine, and looking so piquant that Maurice felt resolution and resentment oozing out of his mind with fatal rapidity.

He flushed at her allusion to his ill-considered interview with her, but he could not for his life be half so indignant as he wished to be.

"Apparently an indifferent messenger. You evidently do not care whether I go or I stay."

"Why should I?"

"Why should Mrs. Wilson?" he retorted, not very well knowing what he was saying.

"Oh, Mrs. Wilson is your hostess. Besides," Bee went on, a delightful look of mischief coming into her face, "she said that she hated to have her plans interfered with, and that you were so handsome that she liked to have you about."

Maurice flushed with a strangely mixed sensation of pleased vanity and irritation, and was angry with himself that he could not receive her jesting unmoved. He bowed stiffly.

"I am very sorry," he returned, "that Mrs. Wilson should be deprived of so beautiful an ornament for her place."

"Then you will go?" Bee demanded, looking at him with mirthful eyes, a glance which so moved him that he could not face it.

"I see no reason why I should remain."

"There certainly can be none if you see none. Well, I want to give you something of yours before you leave us."

She drew from the folds of her handkerchief the little grotesque mask which she had pinned upon her lover's ca.s.sock at the Mardi Gras ball.

Maurice flushed hotly at the sight.

"You are determined, Miss Morison, to spare me no humiliation in your power."

"Humiliation?" she echoed. "Why, I was humiliating myself. Seriously, Mr. Wynne, I have been ashamed of that performance ever since; and I most sincerely beg your pardon. The humiliation is mine entirely."

"But where in the world," demanded he, a new thought striking him, "did you get the thing? You know I threw it on the table."

"Miss Carstair gave it to Mr. Stanford, and I got it from him."

Maurice came a step nearer.

"Why?" he asked, his voice deepening.

"I--I didn't like to have him keep it," Bee murmured, with downcast face and lower tone.

"Why?" he repeated, so much in earnest that his voice was almost threatening.

She was for a moment more confused than ever, but rallying she held out the mask.

"Oh, that I might tease you with it again!" she laughed.

He took the absurd trinket in his hand.

"It is pretty badly dilapidated," he observed.

"Yes," she said demurely. "I crushed it in the carriage on the way home from the ball. I--I crumpled it up in my hand."

"Why?"

"You keep saying 'why' over and over to me, Mr. Wynne, as if I were on the witness-stand."

"Why?" he persisted.

He had forgotten all the doubts which had beset and hindered him, the scruples he had had about wooing, and the fears that she did not love him. He was conscious only that she was there before him and that he loved her; that her downcast looks seemed to encourage him, so that it was impossible to rest until he knew what was really in her mind. The unspoken message which he had somehow intangibly received from her made him forget everything else. He loved her; he loved her, and a wild hope was beating in his heart and seething in his brain. He could not turn back now; he must know. He saw her grow paler as he looked at her, standing so close that his face was bent down almost over her bent head. He felt that her secret, nay, the crown of life itself, was within his grasp if he did not fail now.

"Why?" he asked still again, hardly conscious that he said it, and yet determined that he would win an answer at whatever cost.

She raised her face slowly, shyly; her eyes were shining.

"Because," she said, hardly above a whisper, "I was determined to convince myself that I hated you. But then"--

Her words faltered, yet he still did not dare to give way to the warm tide which he felt swelling up from his heart. His voice softened almost to the tone of hers.

"But then?"

The crimson stained her beautiful face, and faded.

"I think I--I kissed it," she murmured, so low that the words were mere phantoms of speech.

He tried to answer, but the words choked in his throat. He sprang forward, and gathered her into his arms. It is an art which even deacons may know by nature.

When the pair came in to luncheon an hour later, Mrs. Wilson looked up at them, and then without question turned to a servant.

"You may tell Patrick that we shan't need the carriage for the station," that sagacious woman said coolly.