The Wicked Marquis Part 54

"I am motoring up to town to-morrow morning," he said. "I haven't ventured to speak of atonement, but your coming here like this, Lady Let.i.tia, is the kindest thing you have ever done--you could ever do. I have tried, in my way," he went on, after a moment's pause, "to live what I suppose one calls a self-respecting life. I have never before been in a position when I have been ashamed of anything I have done.

And now, since those few minutes, I have lived in a burning furnace of it. I daren't let my mind dwell upon it. Those few minutes were the most horrible, psychological tragedy which any man could face. If your coming really means," he went on, and his voice shook, and his eyes glowed as he leaned towards her, "that I may carry away with me the feeling that you have forgiven me, I can't tell you the difference it will make."

"But why go?" she asked him softly.

His heart began to beat with sudden, feverish throbs. His eyes searched her face hungrily. She seemed in earnest. Her lips had lost even their usual, faintly contemptuous curl. If anything, she was smiling at him.

"Why go?" he repeated. "Can't you understand that the one desire I have, the one burning desire, is to put myself as far away as possible from the sight and memory of what happened that night? We have been telephoning through to London. I have taken my pa.s.sage for America on Sat.u.r.day. I shall go straight out to the Rockies. I just want to get where I can forget your look and the words with which your father turned me out of his house. And worse than that," he added, with a little shake in his tone, "their justice--their cruel, abominable justice."

Then what was surely a miracle happened. She leaned forward and took his hand. Her eyes were soft with sympathy.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed. "You couldn't do anything else. I have been thinking it over very seriously. It was a horrible position for you, but you really couldn't do anything else, that I can see. You told your story simply and like a man. But wait. There is one thing I can't understand. Those shares--were they not to be part of that poor man's vengeance. You surely never intended that we should benefit by them in this extraordinary way?"

"I believed them," he told her firmly, "when I sold them to your father, to be, until long after he would have had to pay for them, at any rate, absolutely worthless. The wholly unexpected has happened, as it does often in oil. Your father's shares are worth a fortune. He can realise his idea of clearing Mandeleys. He can dispose of them to-day for three hundred thousand pounds. Lady Let.i.tia, you have come to me like an angel. This is the sweetest thing any woman ever did.

Be still kinder. Please make your father keep the shares. They are his. They were sold to ruin him. It is just the chance of something that happened many thousand miles away, which has turned them in his favour. He accepts nothing from me. It is fate only which brings him this windfall."

"I promise," she said. "To tell you the truth, I think father is as much changed, during the last few days, as I am. When I saw him, about an hour ago, and told him that I was coming to see you, I was almost frightened at first. He looks older, and I fancy that something which has happened lately--something quite outside--has been a great blow to him."

"Does he know, then, how kind you are being to me?" David asked.

She nodded.

"He rather hoped," she whispered, leaning a little closer still to him and smiling into his face, "that you would come back with me and dine."

David suddenly clutched her hands. He was a man again. He threw away his doubts. He accepted Paradise.

On their way across the park, a short time later, he suddenly pointed down towards the little cottage.

"You haven't forgotten, Let.i.tia," he said, "that I lived there? You haven't forgotten that that old man was my uncle!--that his father and grandfather were the servants of your family?"

"My dear David," she replied, "I have forgotten nothing, only I think that I have learned a little. I am still full of family tradition, proud of my share of it, if you will, but somehow or other I don't think that it is more than a part, and a very small part, of our daily life. So let there be an end of that, please. You have done great things and I am proud of you, and I have done nothing except suffer myself to be born into a very ancient and occasionally disreputable family.... Oh, I must tell you!" she went on, with a little laugh.

"What do you think father was settling down to do when I came out?"

David shook his head.

"I have no idea."

"I left him seated at his desk," she told him. "He is writing a line to Mr. Wadham, Junior, asking him to-day's price of the Pluto Oil shares."

THE END

NOVELS by E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

He is past master of the art of telling a story. He has humor, a keen sense of the dramatic, and a knack of turning out a happy ending just when the complications of the plot threaten worse disasters.--_New York Times_.

Mr. Oppenheim has few equals among modern novelists. He is prolific, he is untiring in the invention of mysterious plots, he is a clever weaver of the plausible with the sensational, and he has the necessary gift of facile narrative.--_Boston Transcript_.

A Prince of Sinners Mysterious Mr. Sabin The Master Mummer A Maker of History The Malefactor A Millionaire of Yesterday The Man and His Kingdom The Betrayal The Yellow Crayon The Traitors Enoch Strone A Sleeping Memory A Lost Leader The Great Secret The Avenger The Long Arm of Mannister The Governors Jeanne of the Marshes The Ill.u.s.trious Prince The Lost Amba.s.sador The Mystery of Mr. Bernard Brown A Daughter of the Marionis Berenice The Moving Finger Havoc The Lighted Way The Tempting of Tavernake The Mischief-Maker The World's Great Snare The Survivor Those Other Days A People's Man The Vanished Messenger Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo The Double Traitor The Way of These Women Mr. Marx's Secret An Amiable Charlatan The Kingdom of the Blind The Hillman The Cinema Murder Bernard The p.a.w.ns Count The Zeppelin's Pa.s.senger The Curious Quest The Wicked Marquis

LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, BOSTON