The Tigress Part 43

She stood, actually panting. She strove to look at him, and failed utterly. Then she tried to free her hand and failed in that, too.

Had the place been less public he would surely have taken her in his arms. But dinner was barely an hour off, and guests were likely to be pa.s.sing at any minute.

Moreover, being at the angle of the corridor, they were likely to come upon them without any warning whatever; just as they had come upon one another.

"Rosie," he said, without the slightest premeditation or consideration, "I've been very unhappy and very foolish, and Mrs. Darling has brought me to my senses. She doesn't want me and she doesn't want the ring. Will you take it back? Will you take _me_ back? She says that you are the one I love, and I think she knows."

All this at headlong speed, spoken as fast as he could form and utter the words. As he ended he opened the hand that had been fumbling at a pocket and showed her the ring--her engagement ring--lying in his palm.

She seemed to stumble and fall sideways against the wall, and his arm went out to steady her.

"Oh!" she gasped. "And mama? What of mama?"

"We'll run away and get married." His words were as wild as her own.

"We'll tell no one. We'll fly. And afterward--afterward--" But there he stuck.

"And mama?" she said again. "And mama?"

He was sure now that for him she was the only woman in the world. "We will live abroad," he said heartily. "Ceylon, Yukon, or some place"--his imagination surely had limitations this evening--"and we will never come back."

Rosamond at length achieved control.

"Mama will never leave us in peace," she declared. "Mama will find us wherever we go. Believe me, mama is quite set against the marriage. She will not have it. And she says if it goes forward _ever_, she'll surely take you away from me. I can't tell you what awful things she's told me--things you've said to her. Terrible things."

At that he paled and loosed her hand. Certainly the corridor was far too public for this kind of conversation; and yet all he could sense was the odor of probable triumph--the exaltation, the exhilaration of winning out.

Never mind the mother; that selfish, narrow-viewed American gra.s.s-widow, who had her little way of having her little way on all occasions and under all circ.u.mstances.

He was determined that Rosamond Veynol must go off with him, so that Nina--and everybody else, of course, might hear of it. All other considerations were forgotten. He seized her hand again.

"Listen, my dear girl," he pleaded. "We do love one another. We've said so a thousand times. Your mama doesn't want the match, and we've tried to break it off. We can't break it off. It's too strong for us. We both have found that out.

"When I suddenly saw you this morning I knew it was too strong for me.

Now you know it, too. But we can't put it through in the open. So let us put it through in the only other way. Let's run off. And at once."

She lifted her eyes to his and he felt that she would help him to manage it somehow. He didn't stop an instant to consider that perhaps she, too, had her triumph to secure. Rosamond was human too.

There was the world, and her mother, and--Mrs. Darling. Oh, especially there was Mrs. Darling. Carleigh didn't know, and Nina didn't know.

n.o.body knew, in fact, but Rosamond Veynol.

Caryll took her in his arms, unresisting, and hugged her very close. He had been warned about the corridor, but he didn't heed in time.

He was still holding her, and his lips were pressed tightly to hers, when Cecile turned the angle and uttered a little cry of astonishment.

Of course there was no escape.

"We--we're going to be married at once," Carleigh explained, stammeringly. And Rosamond, nodding, blushed as red as a peony.

"I am glad," Cecile congratulated.

"But--but--you see," the young baronet continued, one arm still held possessively about his fiancee's waist, "while we're delighted that you should know, we aren't quite ready to tell society in general."

"I understand perfectly. Rely on me to preserve your confidence. I think it is positively lovely."

"Yes, isn't it?" said Rosamond. "Caryll and I were made for one another.

You do understand, don't you, dear Mrs. Archdeacon?"

"Perfectly," repeated Cecile. "By the bye, dear, the car has been waiting for you this half hour. If you've changed your mind--"

Rosamond shook her head vigorously. "Oh, but I haven't," she returned.

Then she said to Caryll: "I'm going over to the Manse, at Ranleigh Copse, for a couple of days. If you'd care to ride over to-morrow--"

"Care to?" he murmured. "How can I wait until to-morrow? Suppose I run over with you now, just to see you safely there."

"Won't you be late getting back to dinner?" asked the chatelaine of Carfen House. "The countess might, you know, be annoyed."

Carleigh smiled. "As the earl has failed to fit me with pumps," he said, "I consider myself excusable. Would you mind explaining for me, my dear Cecile?"

Of course he drove over to the Manse with Rosamond. Nothing in the world could have held him back just then.

And on the way he told her of how nearly he had lost his life in the fire and of how her face had come before him in what he believed was his last moment.

"That should prove beyond everything how I love you, dearest," he murmured.

"I don't require any proof, Caryll, my own," she said. "I feel it so deep, deep down in the heart of me. Our brain knows other things, but it is with our heart that we know the things of love."

There was a great deal of this sort of thing on the way over, and if the chauffeur had sharp ears he must have been very much amused or--very much bored.

Love-making is always so infinitely entertaining to the lovers, with every burning word a fresh delight; and yet how tiresome, flat, trite, stale, and unprofitable to the disinterested yet enforced listener.

Carleigh got back to Cross Saddle Hall in ample time to dress for dinner, and found no less than a dozen pairs of pumps of varying sizes spread out on his floor for inspection and selection.

After dining he redressed and went up to town by a late train. The next day he returned his borrowed attire, and then he went down to Bellingdown once more for a long and important conference with his aunt.

It took place in Lady Bellingdown's boudoir, and this is the way he began it: "Rosamond and I are to be married within a week, and we'd like to be married here."

Lady Bellingdown's breath was quite taken away. She couldn't say a thing. So her nephew proceeded: "You see, we thought first of going to the registrar, saying nothing to any one, and just slipping off to some foreign paradise all by ourselves.

"But Rosamond says she never expects to be married but once, and that as she has her wedding-gown all ready and waiting she might as well wear it and show it."

"But I thought--" began his kinswoman, and got no farther.

"You thought I was in love with Mrs. Darling," he interrupted. "So I--No, I wasn't. I was fascinated, infatuated. But I--Of course you heard about the fire at Carfen?"

"We heard she was horribly burned. Do tell me the particulars."

"They say she's disfigured," he explained. "Her face is all swathed now."