The Tempting of Tavernake Part 47

She sighed.

"I am only human, you know," she went on. "Every one told me that Wenham was a millionaire, too. See how much I have benefited by it. I am almost penniless, I do not know whether he is dead or alive, I do not know what to do to get some money. Was Wenham very rich, Jerry?"

The man laughed.

"Oh, he was very rich indeed!" he a.s.sured her. "It is terrible that you should be left like this. We will talk about it together presently, you and I. In the meantime, you must let me be your banker."

"Dear Jerry," she whispered, "you were always generous."

"You have not spoken of the little prude--dear Miss Beatrice," he reminded her suddenly.

Elizabeth sighed.

"Beatrice was a great trial from the first," she declared. "You know how she disliked you both--she was scarcely even civil to Wenham, and she would never have come to Europe with us if father hadn't insisted upon it. We took her down to Cornwall with us and there she became absolutely insupportable. She was always interfering between Wenham and me and imagining the most absurd things. One day she left us without a word of warning. I have never seen her since."

The man stared gloomily into his plate.

"She was a queer little thing," he muttered. "She was good, and she seemed to like being good."

Elizabeth laughed, not quite pleasantly.

"You speak as though the rest of us," she remarked, "were qualified to take orders in wickedness."

He helped himself to more brandy.

"Think back," he said. "Think of those days in New York, the life we led, the wild things we did week after week, month after month, the same eternal round of turning night into day, of struggling everywhere to find new pleasures, pulling vice to pieces like children trying to find the inside of their playthings."

"I don't like your mood in the least," she interrupted.

He drummed for a moment upon the tablecloth with his fingers.

"We were talking of Beatrice. You don't even know where she is now, then?"

"I have no idea," Elizabeth declared.

"She was with you for long in Cornwall?" he asked.

Elizabeth toyed with her winegla.s.s for a minute.

"She was there about a month," she admitted.

"And she didn't approve of the way you and Wenham behaved?" he demanded.

"Apparently not. She left us, anyway. She didn't understand Wenham in the least. I shouldn't be surprised," Elizabeth went on, "to hear that she was a hospital nurse, or learning typing, or a clerk in an office.

She was a young woman of gloomy ideas, although she was my sister."

He came a little closer towards her.

"Elizabeth," he said, "we will not talk any more about Beatrice. We will not talk any more about anything except our two selves."

"Are you really glad to see me again, Jerry?" she asked softly.

"You must know it, dear," he whispered. "You must know that I loved you always, that I adored you. Oh, you knew it! Don't tell me you didn't.

You knew it, Elizabeth!"

She looked down at the tablecloth.

"Yes, I knew it," she admitted, softly.

"Can't you guess what it is to me to see you again like this?" he continued.

She sighed.

"It is something for me, too, to feel that I have a friend close at hand."

"Come," he said, "they are turning out the lights here. You want to know about Wenham's property. Let me come upstairs with you for a little time and I will tell you as much as I can from memory."

He paid the bill, helped her on with her cloak. His fingers seemed like burning spots upon her flesh. They went up in the lift. In the corridors he drew her to him and she began to tremble.

"What is there strange about you, Jerry?" she faltered, looking into his face. "You terrify me!"

"You are glad to see me? Say you are glad to see me?"

"Yes, I am glad," she whispered.

Outside the door of her rooms, she hesitated.

"Perhaps," she suggested, faintly,--"wouldn't it be better if you came to-morrow morning?"

Once more his fingers touched her and again that extraordinary sense of fear seemed to turn her blood cold.

"No," he replied, "I have been put off long enough! You must let me in, you must talk with me for half an hour. I will go then, I promise. Half an hour! Elizabeth, haven't I waited an eternity for it?"

He took the keys from her fingers and opened the door, closing it again behind them. She led the way into the sitting-room. The whole place was in darkness but she turned on the electric light. The cloak slipped from her shoulders. He took her hands and looked at her.

"Jerry," she whispered, "you mustn't look at me like that. You terrify me! Let me go!"

She wrenched herself free with an effort. She stepped back to the corner of the room, as far as she could get from him. Her heart was beating fiercely. Somehow or other, neither of these two young men, over whose lives she had certainly brought to bear a very wonderful influence, had ever before stirred her pulses like this. What was it, she wondered?

What was the meaning of it? Why didn't he speak? He did nothing but look, and there were unutterable things in his eyes. Was he angry with her because she had married Wenham, or was he blaming her because Wenham had gone? There was pa.s.sion in his face, but such pa.s.sion! Desire, perhaps, but what else? She caught up a telegram which lay upon her writing desk, and tore it open. It was an escape for a moment. She read the words, stared, and read them aloud incredulously. It was from her father.

"Jerry Gardner sailed for New York to-day."

She looked up at the man, and as she looked her face grew gray and the thin sheet went quivering from her lifeless fingers to the floor. Then he began to laugh, and she knew.

"Wenham!" she shrieked. "Wenham!"

There was murder in his face, murder almost in his laugh.