When the Birds Begin to Sing Part 21

Philip is well in the room now, and any moment may see them.

"Would it not look well to attract his attention; sign to him. He is bound to spot you in a minute. Here is the waiter, we will send him.

Waiter! go and ask that tall gentleman to come here. Say two ladies wish to speak to him."

Mr. Roche advances in surprise. He is vastly annoyed to find his wife again in company with Mrs. Mounteagle.

"You did not expect to see me, Philip," she says, a.s.suming an air of gaiety to cover her confusion.

"I discovered your wife at our mutual costumier's in Bond Street,"

cries Giddy. "I know she always starves herself when shopping alone in town, so persuaded her to make a good lunch with me. I have known her to exist a whole day on prawns and ices, or Bath buns with lemonade.

So you owe me a debt of grat.i.tude, Mr. Roche. We are lucky in having ran across you, and two other friends," as Philip's eyes fall on Carol Quinton and the insipid Bertie. "We are simply gobbling our food whole, as we are going to the International Fur Store. I want to try and get a m.u.f.f of leopard's skin to match my cape, for which, alas! I have still to write a cheque. But we are keeping you standing, and Mr.

Eccott is waiting for his guest."

"Don't be late home, Eleanor," he says, "it gets very cold and foggy, and you still have a cough."

The two women watch him move away, then their eyes meet.

"You are a brick, Giddy," gasps Mrs. Roche, squeezing her hand under the table. "What makes you so splendidly loyal to me?"

"Life is so short, dear, it is well to be kind when we can. Besides, I am very fond of you though we did quarrel. I think it will draw us closer together."

"I shall never forget what you have done for me to-day."

As the four friends leave the restaurant Carol Quinton bends over Giddy, and says sincerely:

"Bravo! and thanks a thousand times. You acted to perfection."

"Glad you think so," she replies in an undertone; "and, my friend, _you_ can go to the fur store now, and settle my little account."

She pointed to her cloak as she spoke, and added saucily:

"The m.u.f.f can stand over until the next time."

"So you have made it up with the Mounteagle woman," says Philip that evening, pulling fiercely at his moustache.

"Well, you see, it was _so_ difficult not to, meeting at the dressmaker's. I can't describe to you how awkwardly I was placed. I have felt more uncomfortable to-day than I have done for years. She practically took me by storm, and was so kind and nice it quite touched me. I have gone back to my old opinion of her. She may be a little hot-tempered, but means well."

"It is a thousand pities. I hoped you had done with her for good. I don't like you going to the Savoy with her dressed up in that gaudy fashion. She looks quite remarkable and unladylike. Besides that fellow Quinton is always at her heels, and I have heard some strange things about him. But then he is just the style of man people like the widow affect."

"What have you heard about Mr. Quinton?"

"Oh, never mind; nothing for your ears, my dear."

"Here is the post," says Eleanor with a sigh of relief. She is glad for the introduction of letters to turn the subject.

"Only one for me," turning the envelope over. "I really dare not open it."

"Why? Who is it from?"

"That insatiable Madame Faustine. It will be the bill for my black tea-gown and the blue silk blouse that you admired so much, Philip, dear. Now you may have this letter, and pay it yourself if you are awfully good," laughing merrily. "I will give you the number of sovereigns in kisses."

She looked so pretty as she handed it to him that he tore it open leniently, but no bill fell out.

The letter ran thus:

MADAME,--I am writing to ask you a personal favour, with regard to Mrs.

Mounteagle, who kindly introduced me to you. I was prevented mentioning it to you to-day by the presence of my a.s.sistant. Could you induce Mrs. Mounteagle to remit me a portion, at least, of her long-outstanding account? She has not been lately to our establishment, and I cannot get my letters answered. I thought perhaps you might use your influence, and oblige very greatly.

Yours respectfully, LOUISE FAUSTINE.

"A thousand devils!" cried Philip, crushing the letter in his hand.

"She lied to me--_you_ lied to me!"

CHAPTER XI.

IF WE ONLY KNOW! IF WE ONLY KNOW!

Eleanor's face is seared with weeping.

For the last three days Philip has hardly spoken to her.

She has stayed indoors and avoided Giddy, but now a message comes from the widow commenting on her non-appearance.

She pulls forward a sheet of paper, bites the end of her quill, and cries great drops of tears on the blotting-book. In a straggling hand she addresses an envelope to Mrs. Mounteagle, placing therein that unlucky letter from Madame Faustine.

In as few words as possible she relates the scene on paper to her friend.

"I am disheartened, dispirited, diseverythinged," she writes in conclusion. "As d.i.c.k in 'The Light that Failed' says; 'I am down and done for--broken--let me alone!'"

"Poor little wretch!" thinks Giddy, reading the sorrowful epistle. "I must tell Carol. He shall see this forlorn-looking scrawl." She sighs at the thought of some people's folly. "No sooner met, but they looked," she quotes to herself, _apropos_ of Eleanor and Mr. Quinton.

"No sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed.

Ah! me, it's natural, very plain!"

Eleanor is not going out this afternoon, though the air is mild, the sun shines, and all the world smiles.

She has more than one call to return, which should have been done to-day, yet she sits alone in her pretty boudoir, neither reading, working, nor writing.

Her expression renders her face even more beautiful than usual in the subdued light. For a ray of winter sunshine, heralding the spring, has quite dazzled Eleanor's eyes, till she draws the blind, and settles in a cosy corner at the side of the fender.

In her hand is a letter, brief, yet to its owner teeming with news, so significant the simple wording seems: