Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 44

"Because you are, of course! I have known it a long time."

"Longer than we have, I suspect," with provoking calmness.

Paddy puckered her forehead into a frown, and condescended to look at him.

"Of course, I don't know whether it is announced or not yet, and I'm sure I don't care, but I heard from a mutual friend of yours and hers that it was settled when you were in India over a year ago."

"Might I ask you the mutual friend's name?"

"It was Captain O'Connor. He met you both in Calcutta. But really, except that I like Miss Carew very much, this is a most uninteresting topic."

"On the contrary, considering we have never been engaged at all, and it is very unlikely that we ever shall be, I find it extremely interesting."

"Never been engaged at all!" gasped Paddy.

"Never to my knowledge," with the same provoking calmness.

"Impossible! Captain O'Connor told me he had congratulated you both, and that he heard it from Miss Carew herself."

A sudden light broke on Lawrence. "Did he tell you it happened a year last Christmas?" he asked.

"About then. He was pa.s.sing through Calcutta on his way home."

"Ah!" significantly.

"Then you were engaged," scathingly, "and with your customary changeableness have broken it off again?"

"Yes, that's about it. But this was a record in quick changes."

"Why?--how?" irritably, feeling there was something she did not understand.

"Merely that it only lasted one evening."

"One evening!" incredulously.

"Yes. But, of course, you do not care to hear about it. I quite understand that my affairs in any shape or form are not of the slightest interest to you," which was quite a long sentence for Lawrence.

For a few minutes Paddy felt squashed; then her curiosity got the better of her.

"Did Miss Carew do it?" she asked.

"She did. She asked me to be her tool for one evening, having got into a sc.r.a.pe with a hot-headed Irishman and a woolly-lamb Englishman.

Since, almost as long as I can remember, I have been at Gwendoline's beck and call, I was perfectly willing. I presume the hot-headed Irishman was your friend Captain O'Connor."

For some minutes Paddy was struck dumb. It had never entered her head to question the engagement, and she had not mentioned it to Doreen because it was such a sore subject. Hastily reviewing the past year, however, she could not but see that, on the whole, the news, though incorrect, had been most beneficial to Eileen. Undoubtedly, from the time she learnt of Lawrence's supposed engagement, she had been better able to pull herself together and set steadily about forgetting him.

Only this could not, to a girl like Paddy, in any measure abate what had gone. For every tear Lawrence's heartlessness had made her sister shed, she felt she had an undying grudge against him, and she would not forget. Presently, to break the silence, she remarked:

"I don't know how you can help falling in love with Miss Carew. Why aren't you engaged to her?"

"Well, one very good reason, perhaps, is the fact that she is practically engaged to someone else."

"Is she?" with ill-concealed eagerness. "Who is he!"

"Unfortunately he happens to be a younger son, which is a heinous and not easily-overcome offence in her mother's eyes, and hence the delay."

"What a pity! Is he nice?"

"One of the nicest chaps I ever met."

"Oh, I do hope it will come out right in the end."

"There is not much doubt. Gwen has her father on her side, and I think it is chiefly a question of time with the mother. But, for the matter of that, Gwen always gets her own way in the end. Her mother arranged for her to be a countess eighteen months ago, but at the last moment she advised the earl not to propose to her, and sent him flying."

"How splendid of her!" cried Paddy, forgetting her anger for a moment.

"And she is going to marry a plain Mr Somebody now?"

"Well, he holds a captain's commission in the Guards, and considerably distinguished himself in South Africa. I'm not sure it wasn't his V.C.

that took Gwen's fancy first."

"How nice! I do like her so much. I hope she'll be able to marry him soon and be awfully happy. Do you think I might mention it to her?"

"I'm surprised she hasn't already told you herself. She is not in the least reserved about it, and she is awfully in love with him. She is as good at loving as you are at hating, Paddy," and suddenly he was looking into her eyes, with an expression she had never seen on his face before, and which stirred her pulses unaccountably. She fidgeted with her hands, compressed her lips, and stared straight before her, feeling in every corner of her being that he was still looking at her with those calm, compelling eyes.

"Well!" he asked at last, and his voice was full of that winning quality which had gained him such easy conquests in the past. But it only made Paddy hotly distrustful, and she gripped the front of the hansom and called up every fighting instinct she possessed.

"Miss Carew would hate in my place." She drew a long breath, as if gathering herself together for a special thrust. "Since she loves as strongly as I hate, I am glad it is some one else, and not you, to whom she has given her love." She was unconsciously sitting rigidly upright, and from his corner, with his compelling eyes still watching her face, that gleam that might have been either love or war again pa.s.sed through them.

"You hit hard," he said at last; and then, with the slightest inflection of a taunt in his voice, added: "Why don't you look at me--are you afraid?"

Paddy bit her teeth together hard, and her breath came a little fitfully. She was not afraid--that was quite certain; but, on the other hand, she had not quite the calm a.s.surance she usually felt. She would greatly have preferred not to look at him.

"Well?" he said again.

Paddy took her courage in both hands.

"No, I am not afraid," and she turned her head a moment and looked full and deep into his eyes.

Suddenly he gave a low, harsh laugh.

"My G.o.d!" he muttered. "Patricia the Great!" And then he flung his half-smoked cigarette away and stared into the night.

Neither spoke again, and a few minutes later the cab drew up at her uncle's door. He sprang out first and offered her his aid, but she gathered up her dress with both hands and ignored him. At the door she fitted the latchkey into the lock herself. While she fumbled a little in the dim light, she felt his eyes again fixed on her, and before she managed to get the door open he said, in low, distinct tones, "The new interest you have given me is growing apace, Patricia. I see it is going to be war to the knife, but, if I'm worth my name, I'll win yet."

"Good-night," she said jauntily, as the door at last opened, then slammed it in his face.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

PATRICIA THE GREAT.