d.i.c.k groaned. "Don't make it harder for me."

"What are you keeping from me?" she asked. "Is it anything you don't think fit for my ears? If so, speak. I'm no longer a child. Is there another woman in the case?"

She met Austin's eyes full. He said: "No, thank G.o.d! Nothing of that sort." And as her eyes did not waver, he made the bold stroke. "He finds that he doesn't love you as much as he thought. There's the whole tragedy in a few words."

She reeled back as if struck. "d.i.c.k doesn't love me?" Then the announcement seemed so grotesque in its improbability that she began to laugh, a trifle hysterically.

"Is this true?"

"It's quite true," said poor d.i.c.k.

"You see, my dear," said Austin, "what it costs him--what it costs us both--to tell you this."

"But I don't understand. I don't understand!" she cried, with sudden piteousness. "What did you mean, then--a little while ago--in the armoury?"

Austin, who did not see the allusion, had to allow d.i.c.k to speak for himself.

"I was drunk," said d.i.c.k desperately. "I've been drinking heavily of late--and not accountable for my actions. I oughtn't to have done what I did."

"And so, you see," continued Austin, with some eagerness, "when he became confronted with the great change in his life--Vancouver--he looked at things soberly. He found that his feelings towards you were not of the order that would warrant his making you his wife."

Before Viviette could reply the door opened, and Mrs. Ware and Katherine entered the room. Mrs. Ware, ignorant of tension, went smilingly to Austin, and, drawing down his shapely head with both hands, kissed him.

"My dear, dear boy, I'm so glad, so truly glad. Katherine has just told me."

"Told you what, mother?" asked Viviette quickly, with a new sharpness in her voice.

Mrs. Ware turned a beaming face. "Can't you guess, darling? Oh, Austin, there's no living woman whom I would sooner call my daughter. You've made me so happy."

The facile tears came, and she sat down and dried them on her little wisp of handkerchief.

"I thought it for the best to tell your mother, Austin," said Katherine, somewhat apologetically. "We were speaking of you--and--I couldn't keep it back."

Viviette, white-lipped and dazed, looked at Austin, Katherine, and d.i.c.k in turns. She said, in the high-pitched voice, to Austin:

"Have you asked Katherine to marry you?"

"Yes," he replied, not quite so confidently, and avoiding her glance--"and she has done me the honour of accepting me."

Katherine held out a conciliatory hand to Viviette. "Won't you congratulate me, dear?"

"And Austin, too," said Mrs. Ware.

But Viviette lost control of herself. "I'll congratulate n.o.body," she cried shrilly. She burned with a sense of intolerable outrage. Only a few hours before she had been befooled into believing herself to be the mistress of the destinies of two men. Both had offered her their love.

Both had kissed her. The memory lashed her into fury. Now one of them avowed that she had been merely the object of a drunken pa.s.sion, and the other came before her as the affianced husband of the woman who called herself her dearest friend.

Katherine, in deep distress, laid her hand on the girl's arm. "Why not, dear? I thought that you and d.i.c.k--in fact--I understood--"

Viviette freed herself from Katherine's touch.

"Oh, no, you didn't. You didn't understand anything. You didn't try to.

You are all lying. The three of you. You have all lied, and lied, and lied to me. I tell you to your faces you have lied to me." She swung pa.s.sionately to each in turn. "'Austin can never be anything to me but a friend'--how often have you said that to me? Ah--Saint Nitouche! And you"--to Austin--"How dared you insult me this morning? And you--how have you dared to insult me all the time? You've lied--the whole lot of you--and I hate you all!"

Mrs. Ware had risen, scared and trembling.

"What does the girl mean? I've never heard such unladylike words in a drawing-room in my life."

d.i.c.k blundered in: "It's all my fault, mother--"

"I've not the slightest doubt of that," returned the old lady with asperity. "But what Austin and Katherine have to do with it I can't imagine."

The servant opened the door.

"Lord Banstead."

He entered a cold, strange silence. Everyone had forgotten him. He must have attributed the ungenial atmosphere to his own lateness--it was half-past eight--for he made penitent apology to Mrs. Ware. Austin greeted him coldly. d.i.c.k nodded absently from the other side of the room. Viviette, with a sweeping glance of defiance at the a.s.sembled family, held herself very erect, and with hard eyes and quivering lips came straight to the young fellow.

"Lord Banstead," she said. "You have asked me four times to marry you.

Did you mean it, or were you lying, too?"

Banstead's pallid cheeks flushed. He was overcome with confusion.

"Of course I mean it--meant to ask you again to-day--ask you now."

"Then I will marry you."

d.i.c.k strode forward, and, catching her by the wrist, swung her away from Banstead, his face aflame with sudden pa.s.sion.

"No, by G.o.d, you shan't!"

Banstead retreated a few paces, scared out of his life. Mrs. Ware sought Austin's protecting arm.

"What does all this mean? I don't understand it."

Austin led her to the door. "I'll see nothing unpleasant happens, dear.

You had better go and tell them to keep back dinner yet a few minutes."

His voice and authority soothed her, and she left the room, casting a terrified glance at d.i.c.k, standing threateningly over Lord Banstead, who had muttered something about Viviette being free to do as she liked.

"She can do what she likes, but, by G.o.d! she shan't marry you."

"I'm of age," declared Viviette fiercely. "I marry whom I choose."

"Of course she can," said Banstead. "Are you taking leave of your senses?"

"How dare you ask a pure girl to marry you?" cried d.i.c.k furiously. "You, who have come straight here from--"

Banstead found some spirit. "Shut up, Ware," he interrupted. "Play the game. You've no right to say that."