“I can’t, because I don’t know,” replied Isabel merrily.
“You don’t know? Have you forgotten what the bet was?”
“The stakes were kept secret. If I won I was to ask for anything I chose; if Lord Winterset won he was to do the same.”
“If Lord Winterset originated that,” observed Vincent, “he’s an uncommonly shrewd man. I shall introduce the idea forthwith to all my female acquaintances.”
Lady Florence turned away, with the face of an English virgin.
“Not with mention of the source, Mr. Lacour,” said Isabel, in a manner which he could not misunderstand.
And she moved away to mingle with other ladies, a slight shade of vexation on her countenance.
Lacour rose with rather a sour face, and strolled across the lawn, looking about him as if in search of some one. Apparently his search was unsuccessful. The sun was still warm, and he sought for a shady spot, eventually getting to the east side of the house, the opposite to that where the tennis-court lay. A yew-tree hedge divided this part of the garden from the front lawn, and it was free of people. Vincent found himself by the library window, which was low, not more than three feet from the ground. The window standing wide open, he glanced in, and no sooner had done so than he laid his hands upon the sill and neatly vaulted into the room.
Ada Warren was sitting alone. She looked, and was, in fact, a little tired, and had come there for the sake of quietness.
“I have been looking for you, Miss Warren,” was Vincent’s excuse for the intrusion. “You’ll let me sit here, won’t you?”
“I shall not be so rude as to tell you to go away,” she answered in a rather undecided tone.
“That’s good of you. Do you know I find it restful to talk to you? I do believe you’re the only person I ever spoke to quite seriously.—You don’t answer?”
“I was wondering how far that might be a compliment.”
“To the very tail of the last word.”
“And that was—ly, if you remember,” said Ada drily, giving the letter y its broader value. She looked confused as soon as she had spoken, feeling that the remark ought to have been made in a lighter tone to be quite within the limits of becoming repartee.
Vincent looked at first surprised, then leaned back and laughed.
“I’d no idea you were so witty.”
“Nor, perhaps, so ill-mannered?”
It was a little piece of reparation, and probably carried her further than she intended. Vincent leaned forward on a chair which stood between them.
“You study here, don’t you?” he asked, with a glance at the books on the table.
“I read here sometimes.”
“I suppose you’re very clever and very learned, Miss Warren?”
She moved her head slightly, and seemed unable to find a ready answer.
“Your contempt for me,” he pursued, “must be unbounded.”
“I don’t allow myself to despise people with whom I am very slightly acquainted,” said Ada; again rather more positively than she had meant. She found such a difficulty in striking with her voice the note corresponding to that which she had in her mind—a difficulty common in people who talk little and think rapidly.
“Well, yes, I suppose there is only a slight acquaintance between us,” admitted Vincent. “Not so much, for instance, as would warrant my jumping in by the window just now. I do things on impulse a good deal.”
“So do I,” said Ada.
“You do? Why, then, there’s a point of contact—of sympathy—it would be better to say, I suppose. There are very few people whom I find sympathetic. Do you fare better?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
Lacour allowed a moment or two to this assertion before he continued:
“I’ve been trying to get Mrs. Clarendon’s help in my difficulties,” he said. “She’s generally pretty sympathetic, but I believe she’s giving me up. Have you heard her say anything rather savage about me of late?”
“It would be unusual energy in Mrs. Clarendon,” was the girl’s reply.
“Energy? Well, I don’t know; I always thought she had plenty of that. But I understand you. You mean that that kind of society life doesn’t conduce to activity of mind—to sincerity, shall we say?”
Ada had meant this, but it did not exactly please her to hear it from Lacour’s lips.
“I don’t think I ever heard Mrs. Clarendon speak evil of any one,” she said, with seemingly needless emphasis, measuring her words as if in scrupulous justice.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he observed; “and it’s just what I should have thought. I like Mrs. Clarendon very much, but—well, I can’t say that I find in her the moral support I am seeking.”
“You are seeking moral support?” Ada asked, looking at him in her direct way, with no irony in her expression.
“Well, that’s rather a grand way of putting it, after all, for one who isn’t accustomed to pose and use long words. I want help, there’s no doubt of that, at all events.”
“Help of what kind?”
“Moral help—it’s the only word, after all. Material help wouldn’t be out of place, but one doesn’t go round with one’s hat exactly—till, that is, one’s driven to it by what Homer calls a shameless stomach. Don’t think I know Homer, Miss Warren; it’s only a phrase out of a crib, which somehow has stuck in my mind.”
Ada laughed.
“Now, if you hadn’t told me that,” she said, “I might have been greatly impressed.”
“Pay tribute to my honesty then.”
He rose from his leaning attitude and walked a few paces.
“You’ve no idea,” he resumed, facing her, “how much better I feel since I’ve been talking to you; upon my word I do. As I said, there’s something so restful in your society. You give me ideas, too. I don’t feel sluggish as I do at other times.”
He paused again, and again resumed. This time with a rather pathetic resignation in his voice.
“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon’s advice is the best.”
“What was that?” Ada inquired, her tone colder.
“She said I’d better give up hope in England, and go to some other country. Texas was proposed.”
The girl kept silence. If Lacour gauged her rightly she was reflecting upon this advice as coming from Mrs. Clarendon. Her brows drew together, and there was the phantom of a bitter smile at her lips.
“Mrs. Clarendon thinks you would be better off in Texas?” she asked, with indifference not so skilfully assumed but that this shrewd young man could see through it.
“Yes; she seems to think I should be better off anywhere than in England. I dare say she’s right, you know. My friends are about getting tired of me; it’s time I made myself scarce.”
“And what would you do in Texas?”
“Oh, pretty much anything. The kind of work you see farm labourers doing here—rail-splitting, sheep-washing and driving, and so on.”
“You feel a call to such occupations?”
“Well, I have Mrs. Clarendon’s