He was for announcing the engagement then and there, as publicly as possible. His avowed motive was his pride; a desire to commit himself beyond recall, to establish the fact and make it impregnable, was the secret spring. Irene would not face the whole assembly, but agreed that the news should be whispered to chosen friends.
"It'll come to the same thing in a very little while," he said with a relieved laugh.
Before the evening ended, the tidings thus disseminated reached Ashley Mead, and he hastened to Irene. Bowdon had left her for the moment, and he detached her easily from the grasp of a casual bore. His felicitations lacked nothing in heartiness.
"But it's no surprise," he laughed. "I was only wondering how long you'd put it off. I mean 'you' in the singular number."
That was pleasant to hear, just what she wanted to hear, just what she wished all the world to say. But she burned to ask him whether he had continued in the same state of anticipation during the last week or two. Suddenly he smiled in a meditative way.
"What's amusing you?" she demanded rather sharply.
"Nothing," he answered. He had been thinking of Bowdon's midnight confidence. He reflected how very different men were. Some day, no doubt, he himself would make a proper and reasonable choice; but he could not have gone so straight from the idea (however foolish the idea) of Ora Pinsent to the fact of Irene Kilnorton. It was to lay aside a rapturous lyric and take up a pleasantly written tale. He found several other such similes for it, the shadow of Sunday being over his mind. He was in great spirits and began to talk merrily and volubly, making fun of his companion, of love, of engaged folk, and so on. She listened very contentedly for awhile, but then began to wonder why Bowdon did not come back to her; she would have risked absurdity to be sure that he could not keep away. She knew men hated that risk above all; but surely he could come back now and talk to her again? She looked round and saw him standing alone; then he wanted to come. With her eyes she gave him a glad invitation; but as he approached there was a sort of embarrassment in his manner, a shamefacedness; he was too much a man of the world to wear that look simply because he had become a declared lover. And although Ashley was both cordial and sufficiently respectful there was a distant twinkle in his eye, as if he were enjoying some joke. Her apprehensions and her knowledge of the nature of her triumph made her almost unnaturally acute to detect the slightest shade of manner in either of the men. Men knew things about one another which were kept from women; had Ashley a knowledge which she lacked? Did it make her triumph seem to him not incomplete perhaps, but very strange? The glow of victory even so soon began to give place to discomfort and restlessness.
Ashley looked at his watch.
"I shall go," he announced. "I've been betrayed." He spoke with a burlesque despair. "A certain lady – you can't monopolise the tender affections, Lady Kilnorton – told me she would be here – late. It's late, in fact very late, and she's not here."
"Who was she?" asked Irene.
"Can you doubt? But I suppose she felt lazy after the theatre."
"Oh, Ora?"
"Of course," said Ashley.
"How silly you are! Isn't he?" She turned to Bowdon.
"He's very young," said Bowdon, with a smile. "When he comes to my age – "
"You can't say much to-night anyhow, can you?" laughed Ashley.
"Ora never comes when she says she will."
"Oh, yes, she does sometimes," Ashley insisted, thinking of his Sunday.
"You have to go and drag her!"
"That's just what I should do."
No doubt Bowdon took as small a part in the conversation as he decently could. Still it seemed possible to talk about Ora; that to Irene's present mood was something gained. Nobody turned round on her and said, "He'd rather have had Ora, really," a fantastic occurrence which had become conceivable to her.
"Your Muddocks have gone, haven't they?" she asked Ashley.
"Yes, my Muddocks have gone," said Ashley, laughing. "But why 'my' Muddocks? Am I responsible for them?"
"They ought to be your Muddocks. I try to get him to be sensible." The last sentence she addressed to Bowdon with a smile. "But men won't be."
"None of them?" asked Bowdon, returning her smile.
"Oh, don't say you're being sensible," she cried, half-laughing, half-petulantly. "I don't want you to be; but I think Mr. Mead might."
"Marriage as a precautionary method doesn't recommend itself to me," said Ashley lightly, as he held out his hand in farewell. They both laughed and watched him as he went.
"Silly young man!" she said. "You'll take me to my carriage, won't you?"
Ashley might be silly; they were wise. But Wisdom often goes home troubled, Folly with a light heart. The hand of the future is needed to vindicate the one and to confound the other. No doubt it does. The future, however, is a vague and indefinite period of time.
CHAPTER V
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
When Ashley Mead called for her at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning Miss Pinsent was not dressed. When she made her appearance at a quarter to twelve she was rather peevish; her repertory embraced some moods quite unamiable in a light way. She did not want to go, she said, and she would not go; she wondered how she had come to say she would go; was he sure she had said so?
"Oh, you must go now," said Ashley cheerfully and decisively.
"Why must I, if I don't want to?"
"Honour, justice, kindness, pity; take your choice of motives. Besides – " he paused, smiling at her.
"Well, what besides?"
"You mean to go." The stroke was bold, bold as that of Lady Kilnorton's about Ashley being one of a dozen.
"Are you a thought-reader, Mr. Mead?"
"A gown-reader on this occasion. If that frock means anything it means the country."
Ora smiled reluctantly, with a glance down the front of her gown.
"It's quite true I didn't mean to go," she said. "Besides I didn't think you'd come."
"A very doubtful truth, and a quite unnecessary fiction," said he. "Come along."
She came, obedient but still not gay; he did not force the talk. They went to Waterloo and took tickets for a quiet village. He gave her all the Sunday papers and for a time she read them, while he leant back, steadily and curiously regarding the white smooth brow which shewed itself over the top of the sheet. He was wondering how she kept the traces of her various emotions (she was credited with so many) off her face. For lines she might have been a child; for eyes too, it seemed to him sometimes, while at other moments all possibilities of feeling, if not of knowledge, spoke in her glance. After this, it seemed a poor conclusion to repeat that she was interesting.
Presently she threw away her paper and looked out of the window with a grave, almost bored, expression. Still Ashley bided his time; he took up the discarded journal and read; its pleasant, discursive, unimportant talk was content with half his mind.
"I suppose," she said absently, "that Irene and Lord Bowdon are spending the day together somewhere."
"I suppose so; they ought to be, anyhow."
A long pause followed, Ashley still reading his column of gossip with an appearance of sufficient attention. Ora glanced at him, her brows raised a little in protest. At last she seemed to understand the position.
"I'm