Man and Maid/The Millionairess
V
THE MILLIONAIRESS
I
It is a dismal thing to be in London in August. The streets are up for one thing, and your cab can never steer a straight course for the place you want to go to. And the trees are brown in the parks, and every one you know is away, so that there would be nowhere to go in your cab, even if you had the money to pay for it, and you could go there without extravagance.
Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable breakfast-table in the rooms he shared with his friend, and cursed his luck. His friend was away by the sea, and he was here in the dirty and sordid blackness of his Temple chambers. But he had no money for a holiday; and when Dornington had begged him to accept a loan, he had sworn at Dornington, and Dornington had gone off not at all pleased. And now Dornington was by the sea, and he was here. The flies buzzed in the panes and round the sticky marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the open window. There was no work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce, an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase—clients for Robinson on the second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third. Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o’clock. The young man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea, which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.
“Suppose it is a client” He broke off with a laugh. He had never been able to cure himself of that old hope that some day the feet of a client—a wealthy client—would pause at his door, but the feet had always gone by—as these would do. The steps did indeed pass his door, paused, came back, and—oh wonder! it was his knocker that awoke the Temple echoes.
He glanced at the table. It was hopeless. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I daresay it’s only a bill,” he said, and went to see.
The newcomer was impatient, for even as Guillemot opened the door, the knocker was in act to fall again.
“Is Mr Guillemot Oh, Stephen, I should have known you anywhere!”
A radiant vision in a white linen gown—a very smart tailor-made-looking linen gown—and a big white hat was standing in his doorway, shaking him warmly by the hand.
“Won’t you ask me in?” asked the vision, smiling in his bewildered face.
He drew back mechanically, and closed the door after him as she went in. Then he followed her into the room that served him for office and living-room, and stood looking at her helplessly.
“You don’t know me a bit,” she said; “it’s a shame to tease you. I’ll take off my hat and veil; you will know me then. It’s these fine feathers!”
And take them off she did—in front of the fly-spotted glass on the mantel-piece; then she turned a bright face on him, a pretty mobile face, crowned with bright brown hair. And still he stood abashed.
“I never thought you would have forgotten the friend of childhood’s hour,” she began again. “I see I must tell you in cold blood.”
“Why, it’s Rosamund!” he cried suddenly. “Do forgive me! I never, never dreamed My dear Rosamund, you aren’t really changed a bit it’s only—your hair being done up and”
“And the fine feathers,” said she, holding out a fold of her dress. “They are very pretty feathers, aren’t they?”
“Very,” said he. And then suddenly a silence of embarrassment fell between them.
The girl broke it with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous.
“How funny it all is!” she said. “I went to New York with my uncle when dear papa died—and then I went to Girton, and now poor uncle’s dead, and” Her eye fell on the tablecloth. “I’m going to clear away this horrid breakfast of yours,” she said.
“Oh, please!” he pleaded, taking the marmalade jar up in his helpless hands. She took the jar from him.
“Yes, I am,” she said firmly; “and you can just sit down and try to remember who I am.”
He obediently withdrew to the window-seat and watched her as she took away the ugly crockery and the uglier food to hide them in his little kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely childhood in a country rectory—the long, dull days with no playfellows; then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund Rainham—and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him—poor Stephen, he hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and Stephen’s father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy, Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him into his home to be Stephen’s little brother and friend. Then the long happy time when the three children were always together: walking, boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother’s brother. Then the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered as a pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought to see Rosamund again—had certainly never longed very ardently to see her; at any rate, since the year of her going. And now—here she was, grown to womanhood and charm, clearing away his breakfast things! He could hear the tap running, and knew that she must be washing her hands at the sink, using the horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves embedded in it. Now she was drying her hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen door. No; she came in drying her pink fingers on her handkerchief.
“What a horrid old charwoman you must have!” she said; “everything is six inches deep in dust—and all your crockery is smeary.”
“I am sorry it’s not nicer,” he said. “Oh, but it’s good to see you again! What times we used to have! Do you remember when we burned your dolls on the 5th of November?”
“I should think I did. And do you remember when I painted your new tool-chest and the handles of your saws and gimlets and things with pale green enamel? I thought you would be so pleased.”
She had taken her place, as she spoke, in the depths of the one comfortable chair, and he answered from his window-seat; and in a moment the two were launched on a flood of reminiscences, and the flight of time was not one of the things they remembered. The hour and the quarters sounded, and they talked on. But the insistence of noon, boomed by the Law Courts’ clock, brought Miss Rainham to her feet.
“Twelve!” she cried. “How time goes! And I’ve never told you what I came for. Look here. I’m frightfully rich; I only heard it last week. My uncle never seemed very well off. We lived very simply, and I used to do the washing-up and the dusting and things; and now he’s died and left me all his money. I don’t know where he kept it all. The people on the floor above here wrote me about it. I was going to see them, and I saw your name; and I simply couldn’t pass it. Look here, Stephen—are you very busy?”
“Not too busy to do anything you want. I’m glad you’ve had luck. What can I do for you?”
“Will you really do anything I want? Promise.”
“Of course I promise.” He looked at her and wondered if she knew how hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had turned his head a little.
“Good! You must be my solicitor.”
“But I can’t. Jones”
“Bother Jones!” she said. “I shan’t go near him. I won’t be worried by Jones. What is the use of having a fortune—and it’s a big fortune, I can tell you—if I mayn’t even choose my own solicitor? Look here, Stephen—really—I have no relations and no friends in England—no man friends, I mean—and you won’t charge me more than you ought, but you will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin—and you are Mortimer Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?”
It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all their youth with them.
“Oh, Dornington is all right. He’d be awfully sick if you called him Dora nowadays. He’s got on a little—not much. He goes in for journalism. He’s at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me generally.”
“Yes—I know; I saw his name on the door.” And Stephen did not wonder till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.
“Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are going to look after everything for me.”
He resisted—she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.
“You must arrange everything,” she said; “I won’t be bothered. Now I must go. Jones is human, after all. He knew I should want money, and he sent me quite a lot. And I am going away for a holiday—just to see what it feels like to be rich.”
“You’re not going about alone, I hope,” said Stephen. And then, for the first time, he remembered that beautiful young ladies are not allowed to clear away tea-things in the Temple, without a chaperon—even for their solicitors.
“No; Constance Grant is with me. You don’t know her. I got to know her at Girton. She’s a dear.”
“Look here,” he said, awkwardly standing behind her as she pinned her hat and veil in front of his glass, “when you come back I’ll come to see you. But you mustn’t come here again; it’s—it’s not customary.” She smiled at his reflection in the glass.
“Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions! So absurd! Not going to see one’s old friend and one’s solicitor! However, I won’t come where I’m not wanted”
“You know” he began reproachfully; but she interrupted.
“Oh yes, it’s all right. Now remember that all my affairs are in your hands, and when I come back you will have to tell me exactly what I am worth—between eight and fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say; but that’s nonsense, isn’t it? Good-bye.”
And with a last switch of white skirts against the dirty wainscot, and a last wave of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down the staircase.
Stephen drew a long breath. “It can’t be fourteen hundred thousand,” he said slowly; “but I wish to goodness it wasn’t fourpence.”
II
The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the sun—yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off, where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea, little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through the shallow water.
On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village; her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold of the sand.
Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white, and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.
“It is the prettiest wear in the world,” she had told Constance Grant; “and when you’re poor, it’s the most impossible. But now I can have a clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well.”
“I’m not sure about the conscience,” Constance had answered with her demure smile. “Think of the millions of poor people.”
“Oh, bother!” Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. “Thank Heaven, I’ve enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other people happy too. And the first step is that no one’s to know I’m rich, so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday.”
“I loathe play-acting,” Constance had said, but she had submitted, and now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.
“And so your holiday’s over in three days,” she was saying to the young man beside her; “it’s been a good time, hasn’t it?”
He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at a certain point the heap collapsed.
“What are you thinking of? Poems again?”
“I had a verse running in my head,” he said apologetically; “it has nothing to do with anything.”
“Write it down at once,” she said imperiously, and he obediently scribbled in his notebook, while she took up the work of building the stone heap—it grew higher under her light fingers.
“Read it!” she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he read:
“Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
Long leaning wings across the sea and land;
The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight
The treasure-house of their deserted sand;
And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.
Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer
Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet,
White rippled pools where late deep waters were,
And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,
And the grey wind in sole supremacy
O’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.”
“Opal and amber cold,” she repeated; “it’s not like that now. It’s sapphire and gold and diamonds.”
“Yes,” he said; “but that was how it was last week”
“Before I came”
“Yes, before you came;” his tone put a new meaning into her words.
“I’m glad I brought good weather,” she said cheerfully, and the little stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.
“You brought the light of the world,” he said, and caught her hand and held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall gave them good-day. “What made you come to Lymchurch?” he said presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked down at her hand and his.
“I knew you were here,” she said. His eyes met hers. “I always meant to see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of you.”
“You have not changed,” he said; “your face has not changed, only you are older, and”
“I’m twenty-two; you needn’t reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a month.”
He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” he asked, looking out to sea, “that you and I were made for each other?”
“No; never.”
He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.
“Ah—no—don’t look like that, dear; it never occurred to me—I think I must have always known it somehow, only”
“Only what?—do you really?—only what?” A silence. Then, “Only what?” he asked again.
“Only I was so afraid it would never occur to you!”
There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist—their faces were very near.
“We shall be very, very poor, I’m afraid,” he said presently.
“I can go on teaching.”
“No”—his voice was decided—“my wife shan’t work—at least not anywhere but in our home. You won’t mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit, will you? I shall get on now I’ve something to work for. Oh, my dear, thank God I’ve enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We’ve nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up. All that’s mine is thine, lassie.”
“And all that’s mine—Oh! Stephen!”
For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two yards from them.
The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham’s head was on Mr Dornington’s shoulder. They sprang up.
“Why, Stephen!” echoed Andrew, “this—this is good of you! You remember Rosamund? We have just found out that” But Rosamund had turned, and was walking quickly away over the sand.
Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: “You’ve made good use of your time, old man. I congratulate you.” His tone was cold.
“There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,” Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other’s.
“None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you. Whether it’s fair to the girl is another question.”
In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington’s turn to fill and light.
“Of course it’s your own affair,” said Guillemot, chafing at the silence, “but I think you might have given the heiress a chance. However, it’s each for himself, I suppose, and”
“Heiress?”
“Yes, the heiress—the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I’ve been looking into her affairs: it is just about a million.”
“Rather cheap chaff, isn’t it?”
“It’s a very lucky thing for you,” said Stephen savagely. “Perhaps I ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington—I see we look at the thing differently—but I must say, I shouldn’t have cared to grab at such luck myself.”
Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at his friend.
“I see,” he said slowly. “And her fortune is really so much? I didn’t think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”
Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands.
Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves; they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.
As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch.
“’E gave me a letter for you,” said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.
“Excuse me,” she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. “Constance, you might get the coffee.”
Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.
“This is your doing,” she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. “Why did you come and meddle! You’ve told him I was rich—the very thing I didn’t mean him to know till—till he couldn’t help himself. You’ve spoilt everything! And now he’s gone—and he’ll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day. You will, if there’s any justice in the world!”
He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his voice was equable.
“I am extremely sorry,” he said, “but after all, there’s very little harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy, and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you’ve succeeded. He evidently ‘loves you for yourself alone.’ Write and tell him to come back: he’ll come.”
“How little you know him,” she said, “after all these years! Even I know him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don’t mind, it’s true. And I had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again! I will never speak to you again! No, I don’t mean that” She hid her face in her hands.
“Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know. I will bring him back to you—I swear it! Only trust me.”
“You can’t,” she said; “it’s all over.”
“Let me tell you something. If you hadn’t had this money—but if you hadn’t had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don’t tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh, forgive me!”
“It’s no good,” she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said, forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.
“Could I do anything?”
“You’re her friend,” he said. “Miss Grant, I’m going down to the sea, if you could come down with me and let me talk—but I’ve no right to bother you.”
“I’ll come,” said Constance. “I’ll come by-and-by when I’ve cleared lunch away. It’s no bother. As you say, I’m her friend.”
III
Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless, fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a letter in Stephen’s hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.
“Dear old Chap,” it ran, “I’m off to my father’s. I can’t bear it. I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end of her million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me.—Yours,
“Stephen Guillemot.”
Then he opened her letters—read them all—in the order of the dates on the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man—read them with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them. First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:
“Dear Andrew,—I want you to understand that all is over between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right. I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,
“Rosamund.”
He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen’s letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love: the girl with only a “beggarly hundred in consols” had her pride too.
The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.
A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand against it—it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully, though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post, and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled, his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house under the sea-wall.
Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things—her love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains were drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke. It was an awkward moment.
Rosamund broke the silence.
“It is very friendly of you to come and see me,” she said. “It is very lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London.”
“She has gone back to her teaching?”
“Yes; I wanted her to stay, but”
“I’ve heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is his fault.”
“Poor, dear boy!” She spoke musingly. “Of course it wasn’t his fault. It all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to have done nothing with it except,” she added with a laugh and a glance at her fur-trimmed dress, “to buy a most extravagant number of white dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash—the spare room’s the first door at the top of the stairs—and I’ll get you some supper.”
When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was setting out silver and glass.
“Another relic of my brief prosperity,” she said, touching the forks and spoons. “I’m glad I don’t have to eat with nickel-plated things.”
She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her—not as her guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick of his—one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora, and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.
“Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?”
“I forgive you from my heart,” she said, “if I have anything to forgive.”
But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows in her dear face?
“You have been unhappy,” he said.
“Well,” she laughed, “I wasn’t exactly pleased to lose my fortune.”
“Dear,” he said desperately, “won’t you try to forgive me? It seemed right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless”
“I’d enough for both—or thought I had,” she said obstinately.
“Ah, but don’t you see”
“I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen than”
“Forgive me!” he pleaded; “take me back.”
“Oh no”—she tossed her bright head—“Stephen might think me mercenary; I couldn’t bear that. You see you are richer than I am now. How much did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you to a penniless”
“Rosamund, do you mean it?”
“I do mean it. And, besides”
“What?”
“I don’t love you any more.” The bright head drooped and turned away.
“I have killed your love. I don’t wonder. Forgive me for bothering you. Good-bye!”
“What are you going to do?” she asked suddenly.
“Oh, don’t be afraid, nothing desperate. Only work hard and try to forgive you.”
“Forgive me? You have nothing to forgive.”
“No, nothing—if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?”
“Good-bye!” she said. “You are staying at the ‘Ship’?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let’s part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning. Let’s part friends, then.”
In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to him through the crisp October air. Then the ping of a bicycle bell sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen.
They shook hands, and Stephen’s eyebrows went up.
“Is it all right?” he asked. “I knew you’d come here when I came home last night and found you’d had my letter.”
“No; it’s not all right. She won’t have me.”
“Why?”
“Pride or revenge, or something. Don’t let’s talk about it.”
“All right. I want some breakfast; we left town by the 7.20. I’m starving.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund would be wanting a chaperon or a bridesmaid, or something, so I brought her and her bicycle.”
“Always thoughtful,” said Andrew, with something like a laugh.
Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they met the two girls. Rosamund looked radiant. Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of last night? The wind that ruffled her brown hair had blown roses into her cheeks.
“Do you forgive me?” whispered Stephen when they met.
“That depends,” she answered.
They all walked on together, and presently Stephen and Constance fell behind.
Then Rosamund spoke.
“You really think I ought to crush my pride, and—and”
Hope laughed in Andrew’s face—laughed and fled—for he looked in the face of Miss Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding in it.
“Yes,” he said almost sullenly.
“That is as much as to say that you were wrong.”
“I—perhaps I was wrong. What does it matter?”
“It matters greatly. Suppose I had my money now would you run away from me?”
“I—I suppose I should act as I did before.”
“Then you don’t care for me any more than you did?”
“I love you a thousand times more,” he cried, turning angry, haggard eyes to her. “Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would send me from you now but yourself”
She clapped her hands.
“Then stay,” she said, “for it’s a farce, and my money is as safe as houses.”
He scowled at her.
“It’s all a trick? You’ve played with me? Good-bye, and God forgive you!”
He turned to go, but Constance, coming up from behind them, caught his arm.
“Don’t be such an idiot,” she said. “She had nothing to do with it. She thought her money was gone. You don’t suppose she would have played such a trick even to win your valuable affections. You don’t deserve your luck, Mr Dornington.”
Rosamund was looking at him with wet eyes, and her lips trembled.
“Constance only told me this morning,” she said. “She and Stephen planned it, to get you—to make me—to—to”
“And then she nearly spoilt it all by being as silly as you were. Whatever does it matter which of you has the money?”
“Nothing,” said Rosamund valiantly; “I see that plainly. Don’t you, Andrew?”
“I see nothing but you, Rosamund,” he said, and they turned and walked along the sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.
“That’s all right,” said Stephen; “but, by Jove, I’ve had enough of playing Providence and managing other people’s affairs.”
“She was very sweet about it,” said Constance, walking on.
“Well she may be; she has her heart’s desire. But it was not easy. What a blessing she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn’t have done it but for you.”
“I am very glad to have been of some service,” said Constance demurely.
“I couldn’t have got on without you. I can’t get on without you ever again.”
“But that’s nonsense,” said Miss Grant.
“You won’t make me, Constance? There’s no confounded money to come between us.”
He caught at the hand that swung by her side.
“But you said you loved her, and that was why”
“Ah, but that was a thousand years ago. And it was nonsense, even then, Constance.”
And so two others went along the sea-wall in the October sunshine, happily, like children, hand in hand.