Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 39

"Yes, he's rich," Paddy answered, "and he has a lovely place near Omeath. I wonder when they will be married? I don't like the idea of somebody fresh coming there at all. I'm sure I shan't like her."

"I think you will. She's very popular in India. Everybody likes her."

"I'm rather difficult to please," a.s.serted Miss Paddy with her nose in the air and Guy O'Connor wondered why she seemed so unnecessarily down upon both Gwendoline and Lawrence.

At Lancaster Gate the two brothers got off, and Paddy and Basil proceeded alone. Paddy was very thoughtful, and Basil wanted to talk, which made her somewhat cross.

"I don't know what's happened to you," he said. "You're looking real stunning! I could scarcely believe my eyes when I first saw you."

"Don't talk nonsense," snapped Paddy. "I've only got a new dress on, and there's nothing so very extraordinary in that."

"But there is," he insisted, "it's all very extraordinary. The last time I saw you, you were just dressed anyhow, and suggested milking-stools and hayfields; now you're--well, you're a Londoner."

"I'm _not_," emphatically. "I wouldn't be a Londoner for all the world--grasping, conceited, money-grubbing lot."

"Whew!" whistled Basil softly. "What's Captain O'Connor been saying to get her little temper up?"

"Nothing, only you're so silly, and I haven't the patience to talk to boys."

Basil proceeded to do a little sum on his fingers, looking abnormally grave.

"Umph! thirty-five I should think," he said musingly, "though you hardly look it. No chicken that! eh--what?"

Paddy was obliged to burst out laughing.

"Do you know I think you're improving rather," she told him. "You aren't half such a namby-pamby c.o.xcomb as you were when I first came to London at Christmas."

"Not easy when you're about," he commented, adding, "I think we might be said to have formed a mutual improvement society. If you only knew what you looked like that first night! A sort of antediluvian Joan of Arc!

I thought you were the oddest fish I had ever come across."

"Why Joan of Arc?"

"Because you had war in your eyes from the first moment we met. I didn't recognise it so quickly then as I should now, but I couldn't help seeing you didn't mean to waste much cousinly affection on me."

"I thought you were an awful idiot," she remarked, with smiling candour.

"And you tried to show it with more force than politeness; which was cheek when you weren't anything much to boast of yourself."

They had reached the terminus and now climbed down, walking off homeward together at a brisk pace.

"By the way, how's that long-legged, broad-shouldered British bull-dog specimen who came to say good-by before going to South Africa?" he asked.

"Umph! sour grapes!" with a little snort.

Basil was pleased. He felt as if he were getting a little of his own back again.

"Feeling a bit love-sick, eh?" he asked.

"If I were, I should think I had caught it from you," scathingly.

"Oh, I've given all that sort of thing up now; but I'm naturally interested in your affairs, being a cousin. When did he say he should be back?"

"I didn't ask him."

"Ah! I expect he had already told you."

"He had not."

"What! not when he asked you if you'd have diamonds or emeralds?"

"He wouldn't be likely to be so silly, and if you can't talk sense, Basil Adair, for heaven's sake don't talk at all."

Basil laughed outright then with great enjoyment.

"It's such fun to tease you, Paddy," he said. "You do get so deliriously wild about nothing. Good-night," as they reached her door.

"Don't fling the plates about when you get in, it's such an expensive amus.e.m.e.nt," and he went off down the road.

All evening Paddy remained moody and preoccupied, revolving in her mind how to tell Eileen about Lawrence. In the end she waited until bed-time, and they were alone. She then began a long rigmarole about the extraordinariness of coincidence, which made Eileen look at her with wonderment, and question in her own mind if she had a bad headache or anything. Paddy noticed it, but held on until she was hopelessly and inextricably mixed up, and then, after all her fine preparation, she suddenly blurted out:

"Lawrence Blake is engaged. I heard it from a friend of his this afternoon."

Eileen turned deathly white and gripped a table near her. She looked as if she were going to faint.

"Oh, Eily! don't look like that!" cried poor Paddy. "What a blundering idiot I am. Oh! don't take it to heart dreadfully--he isn't worth it-- really, really, he isn't."

It was too late for Eileen to prevaricate, so she just sat down and leaned her face in her hands and said, "Tell me about it."

Paddy told her all she knew, and how she had heard of Gwendoline Carew before and seen her photograph, but how, when she taxed Lawrence, he had denied there was anything between them.

"I suppose he was just hesitating," she finished, "and as soon as he got back to her he made up his mind."

Eileen said nothing. It was a bitter blow to her, but no words could ease it now. Paddy, however, slipped down on her knees and threw her arms round her.

"Eily, Eily!" she cried. "I'll kill him, I will indeed, if you take it to heart so. I don't know how he dare hurt you, but you are well rid of him; he is just a scoundrel and no gentleman at all, and he would never have made you happy. I am quite sure he never would. You didn't know him so well as I did. I used to hear from Kathleen how queer he was at home. Sometimes he would scarcely speak for days, and he just damped everything for them all; but he was so selfish he did not care. And I hate to tell tales, but I am not sure that he doesn't drink, Eileen. He used to at one time. I feel awful to think you are unhappy through him, but I'd feel more awful still, I think, if you were going to marry him."

Eileen kissed her, but still remained silent. What was there to say?

She had loved this man, she had given him of her best, encouraged and attracted by his attentions, and now at last she knew indeed that what he had won he did not want, and all he had said meant nothing. She remembered the incident in the boat--she remembered the half-hour in the conservatory at the dance--ah! she would not easily forget that; but how it hurt her, oh! how it _hurt_ that this man she loved had proved himself fickle and false. She hid her face in her hands--her eyeb.a.l.l.s burnt and scorched, her head throbbed wildly, but she could not cry.

She felt as if all her tears were dried up for good.

"Don't say anything to mother, Paddy," she managed to plead at last.

"Keep it just between you and me. By and by I shall feel better about it, and then I will tell her myself."

Paddy was crying quietly now; she was devoted to her only sister and cared as much as if the pain had been hers. For the time all thought of her own feelings went out of her mind, and with true unselfishness she pleaded for Jack. But Eileen only shook her head.

"I couldn't love Jack in that way," she said with quiet resolve. In her heart she felt she could never love any one in that way again, but she did not say so to Paddy. She waited until her sister's regular breathing told her she was asleep, and then had it out by herself in the kindly darkness of the night.

And Paddy went to sleep vowing vengeance black and overwhelming upon the cause of her sister's misery.

"He shall suffer for it yet," she told herself. "I, for one, will never forgive him; and if I can make him pay, I will."