The Yellow Crayon Part 29

"Bother the ball--and my friends," she exclaimed, a certain strained note in her tone which puzzled him. "I'm not obliged to go to the thing, and I don't want to. I've invented a headache, and they won't even expect me. They know my headaches."

"In that case," Mr. Sabin said, "I am entirely at your service."

She sighed, and looked up at him through a little cloud of tobacco smoke.

"What a wonderful man you are," she said softly. "You accept defeat with the grace of a victor. I believe that you would triumph as easily with a shrug of the shoulders. Haven't you any feeling at all? Don't you know what it is like to feel?"

He smiled.

"We both come," he said, "of a historic race. If ancestry is worth anything it should at least teach us to go about without pinning our hearts upon our sleeves."

"But you," she murmured, "you have no heart."

He looked down upon her then with still cold face and steady eyes.

"Indeed," he said, "you are mistaken."

She moved uneasily in her chair. She was very pale, except for a faint spot of pink colour in her cheeks.

"It is very hard to find, then," she said, speaking quickly, her bosom rising and falling, her eyes always seeking to hold his. "To-night you see what I have done--I have, sent away my friends--and my carriage.

They may know me here--you see what I have risked. And I don't care.

You thought to-night that I was your enemy--and I am not. I am not your enemy at all."

Her hand fell as though by accident upon his, and remained there. Mr.

Sabin was very nearly embarra.s.sed. He knew quite well that if she were not his enemy at that moment she would be very shortly.

"Lucille," she continued, "will blame me too. I cannot help it. I want to tell you that for the present your separation from her is a certain thing. She acquiesces. You heard her. She is quite happy. She is at the ball to-night, and she has friends there who will make it pleasant for her. Won't you understand?"

"No," Mr. Sabin answered.

She beat the ground with her foot.

"You must understand," she murmured. "You are not like these fools of Englishmen who go to sleep when they are married, and wake in the divorce court. For the present at least you have lost Lucille. You heard her choose. She's at the ball to-night--and I have come here to be with you. Won't you, please," she added, with a little nervous laugh, "show some grat.i.tude?"

The interruption which Mr. Sabin had prayed for came at last. The musicians had left, and many of the lights had been turned down. An official came across to them.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, addressing Mr. Sabin, "but we are closing now, unless you are a guest in the hotel."

"I am staying here," Mr. Sabin answered, rising, "but the lady--"

Lady Carey interrupted him.

"I am staying here also," she said to the man.

He bowed at once and withdrew. She rose slowly to her feet and laid her fingers upon his arm. He looked steadily away from her.

"Fortunately," he said, "I have not yet dismissed my own carriage.

Permit me."

Mr. Sabin leaned heavily upon his stick as he slowly made his way along the corridor to his rooms. Things were going ill with him indeed. He was not used to the fear of an enemy, but the memory of Lady Carey's white cheeks and indrawn lips as she had entered his carriage chilled him.

Her one look, too, was a threat worse than any which her lips could have uttered. He was getting old indeed, he thought, wearily, when disappointment weighed so heavily upon him. And Lucille? Had he any real fears of her? He felt a little catch in his throat at the bare thought--in a moment's singular clearness of perception he realised that if Lucille were indeed lost the world was no longer a place for him. So his feet fell wearily upon the thickly carpeted floor of the corridor, and his face was unusually drawn and haggard as he opened the door of his sitting-room.

And then--a transformation, amazing, stupefying. It was Lucille who was smiling a welcome upon him from the depths of his favourite easy-chair--Lucille sitting over his fire, a novel in her hand, and wearing a delightful rose-pink dressing-gown. Some of her belongings were scattered about his room, giving it a delicate air of femininity.

The faint odour of her favourite and only perfume gave to her undoubted presence a wonderful sense of reality.

She held out her hands to him, and the broad sleeves of her dressing-gown fell away from her white rounded arms. Her eyes were wonderfully soft, the pink upon her cheeks was the blush of a girl.

"Victor," she murmured, "do not look so stupefied. Did you not believe that I would risk at least a little for you, who have risked so much for me? Only come to me! Make the most of me. All sorts of things are sure to happen directly I am found out."

He took her into his arms. It was one of the moments of his lifetime.

"Tell me," he murmured, "how have you dared to do this?"

She laughed.

"You know the Prince and his set. You know the way they bribe. Intrigues everywhere, new and old overlapping. They have really some reason for keeping you and me apart, but as regards my other movements, I am free enough. And they thought, Victor--don't be angry--but I let them think it was some one else. And I stole away from the ball, and they think--never mind what they think. But you, Victor, are my intrigue, you, my love, my husband!"

Then all the fatigue and all the weariness, died away from Mr. Sabin's face. Once more the fire of youth burned in his heart. And Lucille laughed softly as her lips met his, and her head sank upon his shoulder.

CHAPTER XXI

Lady Carey suddenly dropped her partner's arm. She had seen a man standing by himself with folded arms and moody face at the entrance to the ball-room. She raised her lorgnettes. His ident.i.ty was unquestionable.

"Will you excuse me for a moment, Captain Horton," she said to her escort. "I want particularly to speak to Mr. Brott."

Captain Horton bowed with the slight disappointment of a hungry man on his way to the supper-room.

"Don't be long," he begged. "The places are filling up."

Lady Carey nodded and walked swiftly across to where Brott was standing.

He moved eagerly forward to meet her.

"Not dancing, Mr. Brott?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"This sort of thing isn't much in my way," he answered. "I was rather hoping to see the Countess here. I trust that she is not indisposed."

She looked at him steadily.

"Do you mean," she said, "that you do not know where she is?"

"I?" he answered in amazement. "How should I? I have not seen her at all this evening. I understood that she was to be here."