The Star-Gazers Part 2

"Health. Shows how wise I have grown. I'm like pepper; a little of me is very nice--too much an abomination."

Marjorie sighed.

"Hallo! Been reading poetry?"

"No," said the girl, in a low, pained voice. "I was thinking."

"Thinking, eh? What about?"

"Of how changed you are from the nice frank boy who used to be so loving and tender."

"Ah, I was rather a milksop, Madge; wasn't I?"

"I never thought so; and it pains me to hear you speak so harshly of yourself. What has made you alter so?"

"Ask Dame Nature. I was a boy; now I am a man."

Marjorie sighed, and gave him a long, sad look.

"Well," he said, "what is the matter?"

She looked at him again, long and wistfully.

"As if you did not know," she said.

"Know? How should I know?"

"Then I'll tell you," she cried quickly.

"No, no; confide in some lady friend."

"Robert," she said, in a low, husky voice, and her whole manner changed, her eyes flashed and the lines about her lips grew hard. "What have I done that you should treat me like this?"

"Done? Nothing."

"Then why have you turned so cold and hard to me?"

"I am the same to you to-day that I have always been."

"It is not true," she whispered, with her voice full of intensity of feeling, "you left no stone unturned to make me believe you cared for me."

"Nonsense! Why--"

"Silence! You shall hear me now," she continued, with her excitement growing. "I resisted all this till you almost forced me to care for you. You even make me now confess it in this shameless way, and, when you feel that you are the master, you play with me--trifle with my best feelings."

"Gammon! Madge, what is the matter with you? I never dreamed of such a thing."

"What!"

"Are you going mad?"

"Yes," she cried pa.s.sionately, "driven so by you. It is shameful. I could not have believed the man lived who would have treated a woman so basely. But I am not blind. There is a reason for it all."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think me a child? I am to be won and then tossed aside for the new love--fancy, the poacher's daughter, and when--"

"Don't be a fool, Madge. You are saying words now that you will repent."

"I'll say them," she cried, half wild with jealous rage, and her words sounding the more intense from their being uttered in a low, harsh whisper, "if I die for it. The gamekeeper's daughter, the girl taken in here by your mother out of charity."

"Madge!"

"Who is to be the next favourite, when you are weary of your last conquest--one of the kitchen wenches?"

"Perhaps," he said coolly.

"Rob! Have you no heart that you treat me as you do?"

"I never thought, never said a word to make you think I meant--er-- marriage."

"Think you meant marriage?" she whispered. "I did love you as dearly as I hate you now for your heartless cruelty to me. But you shall repent it--repent it bitterly."

"Look here," he said roughly; "for years past we have lived in this house like brother and sister, and I won't have you speak like this.

Does my mother know?"

"Ask her."

"Bah!"

"You dare not ask her what she thinks or whether she approves of your choice. Captain Rolph in love with the gamekeeper's daughter! Is she to be taken to the county ball, and introduced to society? And is she to wear the family diamonds? Judith--Judy--the miserable, low-bred--"

"Here, hold hard!"

Marjorie Emlin stopped short, startled into silence by the furious look and tone she had evoked. The young man had listened, and from time to time had made deprecating movements to try and turn away the furious woman's wrath till she had made this last attack, when he glared with a rage so overpowering that she shrank from him.

"You have done well," he said. "My mother looks upon you as a daughter.

I have always been to you as a brother."

"It is not true," she said, as she stood quivering with fear and rage before him, trying to meet his eye. Then, with a low cry, full of vindictive pa.s.sion, she struck at him, and ran out of the room.

"Curse the girl!" growled Rolph. "I wish women wouldn't be such fools.

A kiss and a few warm words, and then, hang 'em! you're expected to marry 'em. Man can't marry every pretty girl he kisses. They want a missionary among 'em to tell 'em this isn't Turkey. If there's much more of it, I'm off back to Aldershot. No, I'm not," he added, with a half laugh, "not yet--Hallo, mother! You?"

"Yes, my boy. I saw Madge go out just now, looking wild and excited.

Rob, dear, you have been speaking to her?"

"Well, I suppose so," he said bitterly.