"A big price?" she asked wonderingly. "Isn't that a queer compliment, Harry?" Then a light seemed to break in on her, and she cried: "You mean the cost of your pride? I should never let that stand between you and me!"

"Will you make a note of that admission, Mina?" said Harry with a smile.

"Because you didn't say so always, Cecily. Do you recollect what you once said? 'If ever the time comes, I shall remember!' That was what you said."

She looked at him with a glance that was suddenly troubled. There seemed a meaning in his words. She pushed back her chair and rose from the table.

"I don't want dinner. I'm going into the garden," she said.

They sat still as she went out. Harry refolded his napkin and slowly rose to his feet. "I should have liked it better after dinner," he observed.

Mina and Mr Neeld sat on.

"Are we to dine?" whispered Neeld. There is the body, after all.

"Oh, yes, sir," came in Mason's soothing tones over his shoulder. "We never waited for her late Ladyship." And he handed soup.

"Really Mason is rather a comfort," thought Mr Neeld. The Imp drank a gla.s.s of champagne.

XXIX

THE CURMUDGEON

In his most business-like tones, with no more gesture than a pointing of his finger now and then, or an occasional wave of his hand, Harry detailed the circ.u.mstances. He was methodical and accurate; he might have been opening a case in the law-courts, and would have earned a compliment on his lucidity. There was something ludicrous in this treatment of the matter, but he remained very grave, although quite unemotional.

"What was my position then?" he asked. "I remembered what you'd said. I saw the pull I'd given you. If I'd told you before, you'd have had nothing to do with me. You'd have taken a tragic delight in going back to your little house. I should have given you your revenge."

"So you cheated me? It shows the sort of person you are!"

He went on as though he had not heard her indignant e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"I had fallen in love with you--with you and with the idea of your being here. I couldn't have anybody else at Blent, and I had to have you. It was impossible for me to turn you out. I don't think it would have been gentlemanly."

"It was more gentlemanly to marry me on false pretences?"

"Well, perhaps not, but a form of ungentlemanliness less repulsive to me--Oh, just to me personally. I don't know whether you quite understand yet why I gave up Blent to you. Just the same feeling has made me do this--with the addition, of course, that I'm more in love with you now."

"I don't believe it, or you'd have trusted me--trusted my love for you."

"I've trusted it enormously--trusted it to forgive me this deceit."

"If you had come and told me----"

"At the very best you'd have taken months."

"And you couldn't wait for me?"

"Well, waiting's a thing I detest."

"Oh, I've made up my mind," she declared. "I shall go back to town to-night."

"No, no, that's not it." Harry did not want the arrangement misunderstood. "If we can't agree, I go back to town--not you. I kept my fly."

"You needn't make fun of it anyhow."

"I'm not. I'm quite serious. You stay here, I go away. I accept this post abroad--the Arbitration business. I've got to send an answer about it to-morrow."

"No, I shall go. I'm resolved upon it. I won't stay here."

"Then we must shut the place up, or pull it down," said Harry. "It will look absurd, but--Well, we never consider the neighbors." For the first time he seemed vexed. "I did count on your staying here," he explained.

"I can never forgive you for deceiving me."

"You said you wouldn't let your pride stand between us."

"It's not my pride. It's--it's the revelation of what you are, and what you'll stoop to do, to gain----!"

"What have I gained yet?" he asked. "Only what you choose to give me now!"

She looked at him for a moment. The little scene in the corridor upstairs came back to her. So that was the meaning of it!

"I've taken your freedom from you. That's true. In return I've given you Blent. I did the best I could."

"Oh, do you really delude yourself like that? What you did was utter selfishness."

Harry sighed. They were not getting on prosperously.

"Very well," he said. "We'll agree on that. There's been a revelation of what I am. I don't--I distinctly don't justify myself. It was a lie, a fraud."

"Yes," said Cecily, in a low but emphatic a.s.sent.

"I gained your consent by a trick, when you ought to have been free to give or refuse it. I admit it all."

"And it has brought us to this!" She rose as she spoke, a picture of indignation. "There's no use talking any more about it," said she.

He looked at her long and deliberately. He seemed to weigh something in his mind, to ask whether he should or should not say something.

"And you conclude that the sort of person I am isn't fit to live with?"

he asked at last.

"I've told you what I've made up my mind to do. I can't help whether you stay or go too. But I'm going away from here, and going alone."

"Because I'm that sort of person?"

"Yes. If you like to put it that way, yes."