The Second Fiddle Part 21

"Oh, no!" cried Stella, quickly. "I mean there's nothing in it you couldn't see, of course. There _is_ a kind of message; still, she didn't mean you actually to see it. She heard somehow that I was here, and she wanted me to tell you--" Stella's voice broke, but she picked herself up and went on, jerking out the cruel words that shook her to the heart,-- "she wanted me to tell you that she's--she's going to be married."

Stella heard a curious sound from Julian incredibly like a chuckle. She flinched, and held herself away from him. He would not want her to see how he suffered. There was a long silence.

"Stella," said Julian at last in that singular, soft, new voice of his that he occasionally used when they were alone together, "the ravages of pain are now hidden. You can turn round."

She came back to him uncertainly, and sat down by the window at his feet. He had a tender teasing look that she could not quite understand.

His eyes themselves never wavered as they met hers, but the eagerness in them wavered; his tenderness seemed to hold it back.

She thought that Julian's eyes had grown curiously friendly lately.

Despite his pain, they were very friendly now.

"Any details?" Julian asked. "Don't be afraid to tell me. I'm not--I mean I'm quite prepared for it."

"It's to be next month," she said hurriedly. "She didn't want you to see it first in the papers."

"Awfully considerate of her, wasn't it?" interrupted Julian. "By the by, tell her when you write that she couldn't have chosen anybody better to break it to me than you."

"O Julian," Stella pleaded, "please don't laugh at me! Do if it makes you any easier, of course; only I--I mind so horribly!"

"Do you?" asked Julian, carefully. "I think I'm rather glad you mind, but you mustn't mind horribly; only as much as a friend should mind for another friend."

"That is the way I mind," said Stella.

She had a large interpretation of friendship.

"Oh, all right," said Julian, rather crossly. "Go on!"

"She says it's a Captain Edmund Stanley, and he's a D.S.O. They're to be married very quietly while he's on leave."

"Lucky man!" said Julian. "Any money?"

"Oh, I think so," murmured Stella, anxiously skipping the letter in her lap. "She says he's fairly well off."

"I think," observed Julian, "that we may take it that if Marian says Captain Stanley is fairly well off, his means need give us no anxiety.

What?"

"Julian, must you talk like that?" Stella pleaded. "You'll make it so hard for yourself if you're bitter."

"On the whole, I think I must," replied Julian, reflectively. "If I talked differently, you mightn't like it; and, anyhow, I daren't run the risk. I might break down, you know, and you wouldn't like that, would you? Shall we get to work?"

"Oh, not this morning!" Stella cried. "I'm going out; I knew you wouldn't want me."

"Did you though?" asked Julian. "But I happen to want you most particularly. What are you going to do about it?"

She looked at him in surprise. He had a peculiarly teasing expression which did not seem appropriate to extreme grief.

"I'll stay, of course, if you want me," she said quietly.

"You're a very kind little elf," said Julian, "but I don't think you must make a precedent of my wanting you, or else--look here, d' you mind telling me a few things about your--your friendship with Marian?"

Stella's face cleared. She saw now why he wanted her to stay. She turned her eyes back to the garden.

"I'll tell you anything you like to know," she answered.

"You liked her?" asked Julian.

"She was so different from everybody else in my world," Stella explained. "I don't think I judged her; I just admired her. She was awfully good to me. I didn't see her very often, but it was all the brightness of my life."

"Stella, you've never told me about your life," Julian said irrelevantly. "Will you some day? I want to know about the town hall and that town clerk fellow."

"There isn't anything to tell you," said Stella. "I mean about that, and Marian was never in my life. She couldn't have been, you know; but she was my special dream. I used to love to hear about all her experiences and her friends; and then--do you remember the night of Chaliapine's opera? It was the only opera I ever went to, so of course I remember; but perhaps you don't. You were there with Marian. I think I knew then--"

"Knew what?" asked Julian, leaning forward a little. "You seem awfully interested in that gravel path, Stella?"

"Knew," she said, without turning her head, "what you meant to her."

"Where were you?" Julian inquired. "Looking down from the ceiling or up from a hole in the ground, where the good people come from? I never saw you."

"Ah, you wouldn't," said Stella. "I was in the gallery. Do you remember the music?"

"Russian stuff," Julian said. "Pack of people going into a fire, yes.

Funnily enough, I've thought of it since, more than once, too; but I didn't know you were there."

"And then when you were hurt," Stella went on in a low voice, "Marian told me. Julian, she did mind _frightfully_. I always wanted you to know that she _did_ mind."

"It altered her plans, didn't it," said Julian, "quite considerably?"

"You've no business to talk like that!" said Stella, angrily. "It's not fair--or kind."

"And does it matter to you whether I'm fair or kind?" Julian asked, with deadly coolness.

"I beg your pardon," said Stella, quickly. "Of course it has nothing to do with me. I have no right to--to mind what you say."

"I'm glad you recognize that," said Julian, quietly. "It facilitates our future intercourse. And you agreed with Marian that she only did her duty in painstakingly adhering to her given word? Perhaps you encouraged her to do it? The inspiration sounds quite like yours."

She looked at him now.

"Julian," she said, "am I all wrong? Would you rather that we weren't friends at all? You are speaking as if you hated me."

"No, I'm not," he said quickly, "you little goose! How could I keep you here if I hated you? Have a little sense. No, don't put your hand there, because, if you do, I shall take it, and I'm rather anxious just now not to. You shall go directly you've answered me this. Did you agree with Marian's point of view about me? You know what it was, don't you? She didn't love me any more; she wished I had been killed, and she decided to stick to me. She thought I'd be grateful. Do you think I ought to have been grateful?"

"You know I don't! You know I don't!" cried Stella. "But why do you make me say it? I simply hated it--hated her not seeing, not caring enough to see, not caring enough to make you see. There! Is that all you wanted me to say?"

"Practically," said Julian, "but I don't see why you should fly into a rage over it. In your case, then, if it had been your case, you would simply have broken off the engagement at once, like a sensible girl?"

"I can't imagine myself in such a situation," said Stella, getting up indignantly.

"Naturally," interposed Julian smoothly. "But, still, if you had happened, by some dreadful mischance, to find yourself engaged to me--"