Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 20

"In about three weeks."

She gulped down an exclamation.

"For long?"

"What a list of questions!" with light sarcasm; "it feels like an examination paper."

But Paddy would not be put off. She fidgeted restlessly with a letter weight, and then asked again:

"Are you going for long?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"And this--er--Miss Gwendoline Grant-Carew," with a slight curl of her lips, "you are engaged to her, or--going to be?"

"Can't a man have a chum's photograph on his table without being engaged to her?"

"I don't know. I am not a man."

There was a long pause, then she added: "I don't know much about men, either, but I believe a good many of them think it very amusing and entertaining to make love to three or four girls at once, and not care a snap of their fingers for any one of them. It may be amusing, but to my thinking, it is the trick of a scoundrel. I'd hate such a man," and she tossed her head and drew up her slight form, with a defiance that was almost a challenge.

Lawrence paled slightly, but he watched her with his keen eyes in a way that bespoke a sudden and unusual interest.

He tried, however, to counteract the sense of strain in the situation, by chaffing her.

"I believe your real name is Patricia," he said, "but this is the first time I have seen you look the part. I shall have to start calling you 'Patricia the Great.'"

She flashed a glance of scorn at him.

"'Patricia,' to me, means loyalty," she said, with significance. "You may call me what you like, but whether it is Paddy or Patricia, 'loyalty' is my watchword."

He felt almost as if she had struck him. As if a glove, flung pa.s.sionately down, should lie on the floor between them. He got up from his chair, and half turned away, at a momentary loss for words.

"I hear the band," she said, and moved toward the door.

And it was noticeable this time that Lawrence had not heard it, and instead of leading he followed. Moreover, there was something about Paddy's manner that forebade him offering his arm, and at the ball-room door she turned her back on him without a word, and commenced chattering to her next partner.

It would be difficult to describe the feelings of the different occupants of the omnibus which took the party from the Vicarage and the Ghan House home again that night, but undoubtedly the elder folks were now the gayest.

The General was very lively, doubtless because he had got through the evening without the dreaded mishap to his clothes, and was at the same time relieved from the weight of anxiety they occasioned.

Miss Jane had enjoyed herself immensely, and was lively also, and even little Miss Mary was aroused to an unusual gaiety for her. Mrs Adair saw the subdued light of happiness glowing in Eileen's eyes, and anxiety gave place to hopefulness.

But for Paddy and Jack, there was only increased dread, though they both strove bravely to continue to hide it beneath an a.s.sumed merriment.

Paddy saw, as her mother, the light in Eileen's eyes, and something seemed to grow cold within her, and she bit her teeth together, murmuring savagely, "I'll kill him, if he's been trifling with her."

Jack saw it, too, and his hopes grew weak, for he believed he was already worsted; and he saw, with an inward yearning, the vision of all the happy, careless, sunny days at Omeath pa.s.sing slowly and surely away. "What should he do?" he asked, "and where should he go?"

His two devoted aunts noticed there was something wrong later on, before separating for the night, and in Miss Jane's bedroom, they asked each other anxiously.

"What is it?--what is wrong with our boy?"

Miss Mary having the greater intuition, was the first to offer a solution. "Can it be Eileen?" she asked with dread--"Eileen and Lawrence Blake?"

They looked into each other's eyes with a sudden sense of awakening.

"Surely not--" murmured Miss Jane, but her face belied her words.

"Oh, sister," breathed little tender-hearted Miss Mary, "if it is true he will suffer so. I can't bear to think of our boy suffering," and two big tears gathered in her eyes.

"Don't fret, sister," said Miss Jane bravely, blinking back a suspicious moisture in her own eyes, "I don't think it can have gone far enough for that. You see we have lately somehow a.s.sociated Eileen and Lawrence, and Jack, of course, knew, so he would be guarded against caring too much. Probably it is just the sudden realisation that a change must come over their old happy life, and he will quickly get accustomed to it. There is still Paddy, and I have always hoped so--" she paused, and then concluded with a little smile, "What a dear, wild, irresponsible pair they would make!"

Across at The Ghan House, in a room from which a bright light shone through the trees, in view of Jack's window, the two other sisters were taking off their pretty dresses, and preparing to slip into their two dainty little white beds. Now and then they laughed over something that had happened at the ball, but for the most part Eileen was dreamy and Paddy preoccupied.

"Was Lawrence very nice to-night?" asked the latter at last, longing to know what had transpired.

"Yes," Eileen answered simply. Paddy looked round suddenly and opened her lips to speak, but something in her sister's face held her back.

She was going to ask if he had told her about going to India, but realising how it might hurt Eileen if he had not, she changed her mind.

"I can't--I can't," she said to herself. "She looks so happy. I can't damp it; if he has been playing with her, I will kill him--kill him-- kill him," and she clenched her hands together and tumbled into bed, forgetting for the time her own trouble in her wrath against Lawrence.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE FIRST AWAKENING.

It was through her father, a few days later, that Eileen first heard of Lawrence's plans. He came bl.u.s.tering in from his usual daily walk one morning and exclaimed:

"That fellow Lawrence is off again--going back to India to kill a few more tigers--never knew such a chap--can't stay quiet scarcely a month-- pity he doesn't look after his estate at home, I think, instead of gadding off over the seas again, and I nearly told him so."

Mrs Adair, at the first words, had looked up in surprise, but Paddy, who was interested in a small sailing boat at the window, turned and covertly watched Eileen. As she half expected, she saw her turn deadly pale, as if the news were a shock, and Paddy knew at once that Lawrence had not told her the evening of the dance, although his plans were already formed, and she hated him yet more vigorously.

Meanwhile, Mrs Adair asked wonderingly:

"Are you sure you are right, dear! Nothing was said about it the evening of the dance."

"I had it from Lawrence himself half an hour ago. I asked him if he would aid me in getting something done to the drainage in Omeath, and he said he would give me a subscription, but he was going away himself for some time. He then told me he was going to India in three weeks."

Eileen looked up. A sudden thought had come to her.

"It must have been decided in a great hurry?" she said a little questioningly, and hung on the General's reply.

"No," came only too promptly. "It was all arranged before he came back to Omeath. I don't know why he did not mention it sooner, but he is never one to talk of his arrangements. If I had only known, I would have hurried on this scheme of sanitation, for I want his personal support as well as his money. It is very tiresome. Bless the man! he's like a wandering organ-grinder."

There was a pause, and presently Eileen rose and left the room. Her mother's eyes followed her with a look of suffering, but Paddy bit her teeth together and said under her breath: "I'll kill him yet."

Half an hour later they all sat down to lunch, and Eileen joined them with just her usual calm manner; only the shadows under her eyes had deepened, and she seemed to avoid every one's glance.