"I haven't; not anything special, that is."

"You've told me something special already--that you're not looking for him back."

"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."

"Then we'll talk about what goes with it--the other side of the subject."

"There is no other side of the subject."

"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see things as I do--"

"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired--"

"It would rest you."

"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a very trying morning."

"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?

I could a.s.sist you to bear a lot of things--"

His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter, became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have to act alone.

"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."

"Then I'll come another day."

"Yes, yes; if you like, only--"

"Some day soon?"

"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm rude, will you? But I'm not--not as I generally am--"

"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.

To her surprise, the next few weeks pa.s.sed without incident bringing no development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"

which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself, the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.

It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.

For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only s.n.a.t.c.hes of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."

Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use, pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than before.

"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it will be all right in the end."

Still a few weeks were to pa.s.s, and it was early in the new year before Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "_If you like_."

Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.

"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.

"I shall, if you will. You can stop it--or posptone it. If you don't, I have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments again--"

"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or betray the people who've been kind to me. It _would_ be betrayal if I were to let you go on."

"Then stop me; it's in your power."

"Very well; I will."

He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.

It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow rushed in excitedly.

"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who has invented the confounded lie?"

She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly healthy, honest, freckled face could be.

"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."

"I can't; I'm crazy."

"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."

"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let it go on."

Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to "buck up and take it standing."

"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he a.s.sured Miriam. "Evie is engaged to _me_."

"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."

"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."

"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"

"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.

I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on her door-step till--"

"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"

"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."

"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"

"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"

"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"