"How grave you look," he began, for want of anything better to say.
"How grave you look," she retorted, with a flash of the familiar enchanting audacity, as she looked up into his grave dark face.
"I have something to say to you," said Jacynth. The remark was commonplace enough, but he felt his voice fail as he said it, and he knew by the sudden heat in his face that the blood was filling his pale cheeks.
The sound of his voice evidently impressed the girl, for she looked up at him with a sudden start, and her reply was queerly girlish and puzzled.
"What is it?" Then, as if she felt suddenly conscious of a blunder, or of unexpected knowledge, she tried to add other words:
"I mean, of course—I do not understand—I am looking for Ronny."
"Ronny is quite safe," said Jacynth gravely. "He is still at cricket with Harold. What I have to say does concern him though, a little."
"Concern Ronny!" There was a genuine note of alarm in the girl's fresh voice, and she looked up at Jacynth with a wistful trouble in her eyes. "Concern Ronny! Why, what have you to say about Ronny?"
"Can you give me a few moments?" he asked. "It is quiet here."
He pointed to a pathway more secluded than the rest, a pathway with a rustic garden chair, a deserted pathway.
"Shall we sit here for a minute?" he said, and they walked to the rustic seat, and sat down side by side. There was a curious look of alarm in the hazel-colored eyes, but Jacynth did not notice it, for he was looking down, tracing a word upon the ground with his stick, and the word that he traced was the word he had used but now, Kismet.
"What do you want to say to me?" He could hear a hard ring in her voice, and looking up he saw a hardness in her eyes, and his lips trembled.
"We have been very good friends," he began, and faltered. She caught him up.
"We have been good friends," she said. "If you wish us to be good friends any more you will not say what it is just possible that you may think of saying. There are some words which will estrange us for ever."
Jacynth looked at her despairingly. How exquisitely lovely she looked, like some angel of youth, some vision of summer in that autumnal garden. His heart seemed to be beating very fast, his eyes were hot, and his lips dry, and his hands trembled feverishly.
"Listen!" he said, and as he spoke his own voice sounded far away and unfamiliar like the voice of some shadow encountered in a dream. "Listen! I love you with all my heart. Hush! let me say what I have got to say"—for she had turned to him, half appealing, as if to interrupt his declaration—"I daresay you may think it very audacious of me to love you—or, at least, for I could not help loving you, to tell you so. I know that you are beautiful enough and good enough to be addressed by better men than I. I should have been content with my secret love and held my peace. But I couldn't—I couldn't."
He paused for a moment. She laid her hand on his gently, and he trembled at her touch. "I am very sorry," she began, but he went on again wildly:
"I am not quite a fool. Men who are not quite fools either say that I have a great career before me. I have made something of a name as it is, although I may still almost speak of myself as a young man. You shall be proud of me, indeed, I promise you that, if you will only let me serve you. Life is all a game of chances, but if you will take this chance, I do not think that you will regret it. Your lover will not be quite unworthy of your love."
"I am very, very sorry," she said, "but you have said the words which must divide us. I did like you, I do like you very much, but we cannot be friends any more."
"You cannot love me," he said slowly.
"I cannot love you—and I know we cannot be friends. You are not that kind of man. It would tear your heart to pieces. Better one wrench at once and be done with it. And I am not the kind of woman to accept friendship that I knew was only a mask for love."
"You cannot love me?" he asked again monotonously, like a man repeating some set formula.
"I cannot love you. I have played with my life in my own way, and as I have played so I will pay. Now, good-by, I know you too well and trust you too well to fear that you will trouble me at all. You will go away, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Jacynth moodily, "I will go away."
"Thank you, and good-by." She moved away swiftly, and he stood there staring after her until she disappeared inside the hotel.
Jacynth walked moodily back into the garden and stared sullenly at the bright sky. If the autumn day, so warm that it might have been midsummer, had suddenly changed to winter, it could not have looked colder or more dismal to his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. "So that's all over," he said to himself bitterly; "you have played your stake and you have lost, and now you must remember that it is your duty to play the man and not the fool." Thrusting his hands into his pockets he began to walk slowly down the garden path, feeling very dull and dizzy, like a man who has had a heavy fall. He was thinking, or trying to think, of things which interested him so deeply once, and which now seemed so strangely uninteresting, when his meditations were interrupted. He found himself confronted by Castleton, who was eying him sympathetically.
"Old man," said Castleton, "you saved my life once, and though it wasn't much worth saving, I'm devilish grateful to you all the same. So I'd like to do you a good turn now if I can."
"You can't do me any good," Jacynth answered, "there's nothing the matter with me. Don't talk rot, there's a good fellow."
"There's a great deal the matter with you, and I can do you good," Castleton answered. "I can tell you all about that woman."
CHAPTER III.
BY FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE.
HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY.
But this case is so plain … that nothing can obscure it, but to use too many words about it.—Jeremy Taylor.
Lord Castleton, doubtless, did not literally believe that he could tell his friend "all about" that woman. But he probably was possessed with the conviction that when he should have said what he had to say, there would remain little more worth telling. We smile with a kind of fatigued contempt at the venerable classical joke of the fool who, wishing to sell his house, carried about a brick from it as a specimen. We know better how to judge of houses. But we are willing—sometimes—to pick off a very small fragment of human life, and to exclaim knowingly, "Look here, I'll tell you what it is made of!"
Lord Castleton's well-meant offer was not received with gratitude.
"What woman?" growled Jacynth, taking one hand out of his pocket to tilt his hat a little more over his eyes.
"Why, Mrs.—Miss—Lady—by Jove, I scarcely know what to call her!"
"That's a good beginning," said Jacynth sardonically.
"No, no, my dear fellow, I really do know all about her; only it's—it's a little puzzling where to begin."
"Why begin?"
The fat little gentleman reddened and frowned. Then his good nature, and his sense of obligation to the other man, and his pity for him (which, perhaps, rendered the sense of obligation easier to bear) conquered the momentary irritation.
"The