While Tom helped himself to the other "whack," his friend said with a sigh:
"You're a lucky beggar to be able to think of marriage at your time of life."
"Don't I know it? For that I've got the pater to thank; he's been making more piles. All he really wants is that I should settle down; nothing would please him better than to see me married; he'd be almost as glad as I should to have Mary as a member of the family. Isn't it queer that while I've liked Mary all her life I've liked her more and more as time went on, until-well, if I do get her I shall have got all I want."
"Then, with all my heart, I hope you get her."
"I've decided hopes, old man-decided. I say, you know, Stella's not a bad sort, although I am her brother."
"Do you think that I don't know it?"
"You're the best pal I have in the world, and-I don't think she objects to you."
"Tom, dear old chap, don't say another word-please. I'm never going to ask a girl to marry me until I'm in a position to keep her as my wife should be kept."
"That's sound enough in a general way; but as regards this particular case it's all tuppence. Stella has money, and the pater, if properly worked, would supply more; I happen to know that he's quite willing she should marry anyone she likes, so long as it's a decent chap-and he knows you're that. Why, if it comes to that, he could slip you, as easy as winking, into a much better berth than the one you have at your uncle's."
"Tom, I know you're the best chum a man ever had, and one day I'm going to prove it. I haven't your happy knack of baring my heart, even to myself; I'm a more secretive kind of brute; but, like you, I have my dreams, and before very long I hope to have good news for you. But now, please, don't say anything more about it."
And Tom said nothing; he changed the subject to Oxford gossip, chattering away light-heartedly while Rodney glanced at the letters which the morning post had brought. Among them was one in a bold, slashing hand, which he knew well.
"Dear Old Boy, – The dad's gone off weekending without notice, and I never found out what he was going to do till it was too late to get at you, or I would have got; so here am I in this great mausoleum of a house all on my lonesome. To-morrow, early, I've an engagement with Cissie Henderson, but in the evening-and no nonsense, sir! – you'll have to dine me in some quiet place, where there are no prying eyes; and afterwards you can amuse me as you like. No excuse will be accepted; I want to spend to-morrow evening in your society, and I'm going to-and the dad can go hang! So mind you send me a wire directly you get this to let me know where I'm to meet you-at seven, sir! – and don't let there be any mistake about it. Until we do meet,
As he read this characteristic note of an up-to-date young woman a chord was touched somewhere in Rodney's being which made him conscious of a pleasant little thrill. Even while Austin chattered he was telling himself that he also would let the lady's "dad go hang," and that she should spend the evening in his society, be the consequences what they might.
When the visitor departed it was understood that Rodney would send a wire on his way to the office to let Stella know at what time she might expect him. Scarcely had Austin left the house than there came a telegram for Elmore. He opened it, supposing it to be from the impatient lady in Russell Square; but he was wrong. The message ran:
"Do come down to-morrow and cheer me up. Aunt is going out. I shall be alone. I have had Tom as companion for three whole days, so am in need of a tonic. Wire train. Be sure and come.
Mary? For a moment he wondered who Mary was. Then he saw that the message had been handed in at a Brighton post-office, and he understood. Mary? Mary was Mary Carmichael. At the thought of her his eyes sparkled and his spirits rose. After a fashion Mary Carmichael was the feminine creature in all the world that he liked best. Not only was she pretty, and dainty, and bright, and smart and clever, but just as Gladys Patterson appealed to him in one direction so Mary Carmichael did in another. Her telegram suggested what that direction was; in a way they were birds of a feather. Tom Austin had been her life-long admirer, slave, her avowed wooer; quite probably one day she would become his wife; yet she was not averse to being "cheered up" by his bosom friend, after confessing, by telegram, that she had been bored by three days of his society. Rodney chuckled at the thought of it; the thing seemed to him to be so amusing. Just now Tom had been telling him, with boyish candour, in single-hearted confidence in his integrity, that he had come away from Brighton under the impression that he was shortly to be made the happiest of men; and here was the girl who was to make him happy so anxious for an antidote to his society, begging him to do what Tom clearly had not done-cheer her up-and adding, as a peculiar inducement, that she would be alone. Poor old Tom! what a fool he was-and what a little minx was pretty Miss Mary!
On his way to the office Rodney sent three telegrams. One to Stella Austin, at Kensington, to say that he would be with her as near to two o'clock as possible, and that he hoped she would come out with him; one to Gladys Patterson, in Russell Square, asking her to meet him at a restaurant in Jermyn Street at seven sharp; one to Mary Carmichael, at Hove, informing her that he would arrive in Brighton to-morrow morning by the train due at noon. It was a female clerk to whom he handed these three messages; when she had scanned them she glanced up at him, as he felt, with a species of curiosity; he had a suspicion that she smiled.
CHAPTER V
STELLA
On the whole, Rodney Elmore spent a pleasant afternoon with Stella Austin. He took her to the Zoological Gardens, which was a place she liked. Beyond doubt she enjoyed herself immensely. She was very fond of animals, even of the most savage kind. In the wild-beast house, confronting the lions and the tigers, with Rodney at her side, she wondered, with a little shudder, what would happen if the creatures all got out. Drawing her arm in his, he pressed it closely; she liked that, too.
From his point of view, the pleasure with which she greeted him on his arrival at the house in Kensington was almost pathetic. He reproached her gently for not having told him she was coming to town. She replied that it had only been decided at the last moment, and that she was just going to write to him when Tom, appearing on the scene, offered to take the news in person. The way in which she took it for granted that he was as glad to see her as she was to see him appealed to his sympathy so strongly that he was nearly moved to take her in his arms and kiss her there and then. But he refrained. He never had kissed Stella, even in the old days. He had always had a feeling that a kiss would mean so much more to her than it did to him; indeed, that was one of her faults in his eyes, that everything meant so much more to her than it did to him. Often he would have liked to kiss her; having brought matters to a point at which a kiss was the next thing which might have been expected, he felt sure that she had expected it. But he kept himself sufficiently in hand to stop on the very edge, having it in his mind that it might be as well for him to be able, some day, if need be, to assert with truth that he had never gone beyond it. Ordinarily he would have had no scruples on such a point. Oddly enough, in a sense, he was afraid of Stella, recognising in her an essential purity with which he himself had nothing in common. Her standard of life was so infinitely above his own that he was always conscious of a sense of strain after being some time in her company; it came from his attempting to sustain himself in the rarefied atmosphere in which she moved with ease. He would have been willing to hold her in his arms; he would have loved to; but he would not have liked to know that she was his superior in all essentials; and he would have to know. Sooner or later she might discover what kind of creature he was; but, though he believed that in such a plight she would keep her own counsel, none the less he would resent the discovery she had made.
Then, again, his taste in women was