Winding Paths Part 43

"Splendid!... " a trifle testily. "Why? Splendid seems an odd word to use."

"It's the one that suits Ethel Hayward best of all. Anything else would be too commonplace. When I think what her life is - the endless struggle to make both ends meet - work morning, noon, and night - and on the top of it all the brother she adores a helpless, suffering invalid, it quite overawes me. If she were bitter and complaining it would be different, but she is nearly always cheerful and hopeful and ready to think of some one else's troubles. And yet she isn't goody-goody - nor what one describes as "worthy'; she's just human through and through."

"She sometimes seems to me a little severe," he said.

"Severe!... Oh, Dudley, she is the kindest soul alive."

"Perhaps she was tired; but it seemed to me, considering Doris's youth, she expected rather a lot of her."

"Ah!..."

Hal turned away, and picked up an evening paper. The exclamation might have meant anything, yet Dudley half knew it meant that in some way Hal believed Doris had wilfully misrepresented her sister, and, naturally resenting the inference, he returned to his book and said no more.

Hal lingered a little longer, pa.s.sed one or two remarks on the evening news, told him of her day in the country, and then went to bed.

Yet, in spite of her soreness towards Doris, something in her evening with Ethel had unaccountably cheered and refreshed her - the kindly praise, the warm-hearted affection, the sight of the strong, womanly face, unembittered by its heavy sorrow.

Hal stood at her window, and glanced out over the City, and felt renewed in her determination to withstand Sir Edwin Crathie's advances.

She knew that he was treating her with a lack of respect he would not have dared to show a woman in his own circle.

He was treating her as a City typist; and however much she wished to prolong it, she knew she owed it to herself to cut it adrift.

And the next day, when the antic.i.p.ated telephone call came, her resolution was firm and unshaken.

"Tell the gentleman I am engaged," she told the call boy.

He came back again a moment later to know what time she would be disengaged, and she gave the message: "It is quite impossible to say.

I have some most important work on hand."

The small boy grinned in a way that made Hal long to box his ears, but she returned to her work, and pretended not to see.

At the other end of the wire the speaker sat back in his chair and muttered an oath; then for some moments he stared gloomily at his desk.

"d.a.m.n it! I like her pluck," ran his thoughts; "but I don't mean to be put off like that. I've got to see her again somehow, if it's only to prove I'm not the cad she thinks me."

CHAPTER XXIII

The following afternoon when Hal left the office about half-past four she saw a motor she recognised a little way down the street, and was almost immediately accosted by Sir Edwin himself.

"I knew you left at this time," he said frankly, "so I came to meet you."

Hal looked a little taken aback.

"I wonder why you did that," was all she found to say.

"Well, it was the only way, since you won't come to the telephone, and I am afraid to call on you in Bloomsbury. I want to talk to you. Come along and have some tea."

Hal hesitated, looking doubtfully at the motor, but he urged her on.

"Come; surely you're not afraid to have a cup of tea with me. We'll go to the Carlton - or the Ritz if you prefer it - and take a conspicuous table."

"In my office garments!" with a low laugh. "I don't want to be taken for your housekeeper."

"My housekeeper is a deuce of a swell," laughing in his turn. "She certainly wouldn't be seen in a last year's frock; but you're one of the lucky people who manage to look smart, even in office clothes, as you call them - so come along."

Hal got into the motor.

"Which is it to be? Ritz or Carlton?"

"Oh, Carlton - and not the centre table."

"How do you manage it?" he said, as they glided off, looking at her with critical, admiring eyes.

"Manage what? I wish you wouldn't look at me like a doctor studying my health. I shall put my tongue out in a minute."

"Don't do that. A colleague or an opponent would be sure to be looking, and I don't know which would be worse. Manage to look smart in anything, of course I mean."

"Oh, it's Lorraine Vivian and her maid; they loathe to see me dowdy."

"With a little help from the Almighty, who gave you a haughty little nose and a short upper lip," he told her laughingly. "You're been very angry with me, I'm afraid, and no doubt I deserved it, but I'm going to make you be friends again and forgive me."

"You won't find it easy."

"I dare say not; but I'm going to try all the same. Shall I begin with a humble apology?"

"You couldn't be humble. I shouldn't believe in it."

"I believe I could with you - which means a great deal. Tell me, were you fully determined not to speak to me on the telephone, and not to see me again?"

"Most certainly I was."

"What nonsense! And did you really suppose I should submit without making an effort to see you, and persuade you to be friends again?"

Hal tilted her nose up a little, and glanced away as she replied a trifle scathingly:

"I supposed, having found I was not the sort of girl you imagined, and not one you could take liberties with, that possibly our friendship would cease to interest you."

He coloured slightly.

"You hit hard, but I suppose I have deserved it. I shall now have to prove to you that I've turned over a new leaf, and deserve it no longer."

They stopped before the Carlton as he spoke, and he led the way into the lounge, and to a side table.