The Lamp of Fate Part 24

Magda, released at last from Virginie's wors.h.i.+pfully careful hands, came slowly down the main staircase. She was in black, diaphanous and elusive, from which her flower-pale face and shoulders emerged like a water-lily starring the dark pool on which it floats. A crimson rose glowed just above her heart--that and her softly scarlet lips the only touches of colour against the rare black-and-white loveliness of her.

She was descending the stairs reluctantly, mentally occupied in s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up courage to fulfil her promise to Davilof. A 'phone message from Friars' Holm had come through saying that Coppertop was better. All danger was pa.s.sed and there was no longer any need for her to return early. So it remained, now, for her to keep her pact with the musician.

As she rounded the last bend in the staircase, she saw that a man was standing with bent head at the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting for someone, and she threw a quick, nervous glance in the direction of the motionless figure, thinking it might be Davilof himself. It would be like his eager impatience to await her coming there. Then, as the lights gleamed on fair, crisply waving hair she realised that the man was Michael--Michael, whom she believed to be on his way to Spain!

Perhaps it was merely chance, or perhaps it was at the direct inspiration of Lady Arabella, but, whatever may have been the cause, Gillian had not confided to Magda that Quarrington was to be at her G.o.dmother's reception. The sudden, totally unexpected meeting with him--with this man who had contrived to dominate her thoughts so inexplicably--startled a little cry of surprise from her lips. She drew back abruptly, and then--quite how it happened she could not tell--but she missed her footing and fell.

For the fraction of a second she experienced a horrible sensation of utter helplessness to save herself; then Michael's arms closed round her as he caught her before she reached the ground.

The shock of the fall stupefied her for a moment. She lay against his breast like a terrified child, clinging to him convulsively.

"It's all right," he murmured soothingly. "You're quite safe."

Unconsciously his arms tightened round her. His breath quickened. The satin-soft hair had brushed his cheek as she fell; the pale, exquisite face and warm white throat lay close beneath his lips--all the fragrant beauty of her gathered unresisting against his heart. He had only to stoop his head----

With a stifled exclamation he jerked himself backward, squaring his shoulders, and released her, though he still steadied her with a hand beneath her arm.

"There, you are all right," he said rea.s.suringly. "No bones broken."

The commonplace words helped to restore her poise.

"Oh! Thank you!" The words came a little gaspingly still. "I--I don't know how I came to fall like that. I think you startled me--I didn't expect to see you here."

"I didn't expect to be," he returned, smiling a little.

Magda did not ask how it had come to pa.s.s. For the moment it was enough for her that he _was_ there--that he had not gone away! She was conscious of a sudden incomprehensible sense of tumult within her.

"It was lucky for me you happened to be standing just at the foot of the stairs," she said a little unsteadily.

"I didn't 'happen.' I was there of _malice prepense_"--the familiar crooked smile flashed out--"waiting for you."

"Waiting for me?"

"Yes. Lady Arabella asked me to shepherd you into the supper-room and see that you had a gla.s.s of champagne and a sandwich before the dancing begins."

"Orders from headquarters?"--smiling up at him.

"Exactly."

He held out his arm and they moved away together. As they pa.s.sed through the crowded rooms one man murmured ironically to another:

"Quarrington's got it badly, I should say."

The second man glanced after the pair with amused eyes.

"So he's the latest victim, is he? I head young Raynham's nose was out of joint."

"You don't mean she's fired him?"

The other nodded.

"Got the push the day before yesterday," he answered tersely.

"Poor devil! He'll take it hard. He's a hotheaded youngster. Just the sort to go off and blow his brains out."

Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the empty supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella's commands were obeyed, in spite of Magda's a.s.surances that she was not in the least hungry.

"Then you ought to be," he replied. "After dancing. Besides, unlike the rest of us, you had no dinner."

"Oh, I had a light meal at six o'clock. But naturally, you can't consume a solid dinner just before giving a performance."

"I'm not going to pay you compliments about your dancing," he observed quietly, after a pause. "You must receive a surfeit of them.

But"--looking at her with those direct grey eyes of his--"I'm glad I didn't leave England when I intended to."

"Why didn't you?" she asked impulsively.

He laughed.

"Because it's so much easier to yield to temptation than to resist," he answered, not taking his eyes from her face.

She flushed a little.

"What was the temptation?" she asked uncertainly.

He waited an instant, then answered with deliberation:

"The temptation of seeing you again."

"I should have thought you disapproved of me far too much for that to be the case! Saint Michel, don't you think you're rather hard on me?"

"Am I? I had an old-fas.h.i.+oned mother, you see. Perhaps my ideas about women are out of date."

"Tell me them."

He regarded her reflectively.

"Shall I? Well, I like to think of a woman as something sweet and fragrant, infinitely tender and compa.s.sionate--not as a marauder and despoiler. Wherever she comes, the place should be the happier for her coming--not bereft by it. She should be the helper and healer in this battered old world. That's the sort of woman I should want my wife to be; that's the sort of woman my mother was."

"And you think I'm--not like that? I'm the marauder, I suppose?"

He remained silent, and Magda sat with her bent head, fingering the stem of her wine-gla.s.s restlessly.

"You like my dancing?" she said at last.

"You know I do."

"Well"--she looked at him with a mixture of defiance and appeal. "My dancing is me--the real me."

He shook his head.