"I might kill myself for less, and yet be justified."She looked her despair of him. "What must I do to make you reasonable?""Set me the example by being reasonable yourself, and let there be no more of this wild talk of leaving me the very moment you are come. Leduc, a chair for Mistress Winthrop!"he commanded, as though chairs abounded in a garden nook. But Leduc, the diplomat, had effaced himself.
She laughed at his grand air, and, herself, drew forward the stool that had been Leduc's, and sat down. Satisfied, Mr. Caryll made her a bow, and seated himself sideways on his long chair, so that he faced her. She begged that he would dispose himself more comfortably; but he scorned the very notion.
"Unaided I walked here from the house," he informed her with a boastful air. "I had need to begin to feel my feet again.
You are pampering me here, and to pamper an invalid is bad; it keeps him an invalid. Now I am an invalid no longer.""But the doctor - " she began.
"The doctor, ma'am, is disposed of already," he assured her.
"Very definitely disposed of. Ask Leduc. He will tell you.""Not a doubt of that," she answered. "Leduc talks too much.""You have a spite against him for the information he gave me on the score of how and by whom I was nursed. So have I.
Because he did not tell me before, and because when he told me he would not tell me enough. He has no eyes, this Leduc. He is a dolt, who only sees the half of what happens, and only remembers the half of what he has seen.""I am sure of it," said she.
He looked surprised an instant. Then he laughed. "I am glad that we agree.""But you have yet to learn the cause. Had this Leduc used his eyes or his ears to better purpose, he had been able to tell you something of the extent to which I am in your debt.""Ah?" said he, mystified. Then: "The news will be none the less welcome from your lips, ma'am," said he. "Is it that you are interested in the ravings of delirium, and welcomed the opportunity of observing them at first hand? I hope I raved engagingly, if so be that I did rave. Would it, perchance, be of a lady that I talked in my fevered wanderings? - of a lady pale as a lenten rose, with soft brown eyes, and lips that - ""Your guesses are all wild," she checked him. "My debt is of a more real kind. It concerns my - my reputation.""Fan me, ye winds!" he ejaculated.
"Those fine ladies and gentlemen of the town had made my name a by-word," she explained in a low, tense voice, her eyelids lowered. "My foolishness in running off with my Lord Rotherby - that I might at all cost escape the tyranny of my Lady Ostermore" (Mr. Caryll's eyelids flickered suddenly at that explanation) - "had made me a butt and a jest and an object for slander. You remember, yourself, sir, the sneers and oglings, the starings and simperings in the park that day when you made your first attempt to champion my cause, inducing the Lady Mary Deller to come and speak to me.""Nay, nay - think of these things no more. Gnats will sting;'tis in their nature. I admit 'tis very vexing at the time;but it soon wears off if the flesh they have stung be healthy.
So think no more on't."
"But you do not know what follows. Her ladyship insisted that I should drive with her a week after your hurt, when the doctor first proclaimed you out of danger, and while the town was still all agog with the affair. No doubt her ladyship thought to put a fresh and greater humiliation upon me; you would not be present to blunt the edge of the insult of those creatures' glances. She carried me to Vauxhall, where a fuller scope might be given to the pursuit of my shame and mortification. Instead, what think you happened?""Her ladyship, I trust, was disappointed."
"The word is too poor to describe her condition. She broke a fan, beat her black boy and dismissed a footman, that she might vent some of the spleen it moved in her. Never was such respect, never such homage shown to any woman as was shown to me that evening. We were all but mobbed by the very people who had earlier slighted me.
"'Twas all so mysterious that I must seek the explanation of it. And I had it, at length, from his Grace of Wharton, who was at my side for most of the time we walked in the gardens.
I asked him frankly to what was this change owing. And he told me, sir."She looked at him as though no more need be said. But his brows were knit. "He told you, ma'am?" he questioned. "He told you what?""What you had done at White's. How to all present and to my Lord Rotherby's own face you had related the true story of what befell at Maidstone - how I had gone thither, an innocent, foolish maid, to be married to a villain, whom, like the silly child I was, I thought I loved; how that villain, taking advantage of my innocence and ignorance, intended to hoodwink me with a mock-marriage.
"That was the story that was on every lip; it had gone round the town like fire; and it says much for the town that what between that and the foul business of the duel, my Lord Rotherby was receiving on every hand the condemnation he deserves, while for me there was once more - and with heavy interest for the lapse from it - the respect which my indiscretion had forfeited, and which would have continued to be denied me but for your noble championing of my cause.
"That, sir, is the extent to which. I am in your debt. Do you think it small? It is so great that I have no words in which to attempt to express my thanks."Mr. Caryll looked at her a moment with eyes that were very bright. Then he broke into a soft laugh that had a note of slyness.
"In my time," said he, "I have seen many attempts to change an inconvenient topic. Some have been artful; others artless;others utterly clumsy. But this, I think, is the clumsiest of them all. Mistress Winthrop, 'tis not worthy in you."She looked puzzled, intrigued by his mood.
"Mistress Winthrop," he resumed, with an entire change of voice. "To speak of this trifle is but a subterfuge of yours to prevent me from expressing my deep gratitude for your care of me.""Indeed, no - " she began.
