"You are you, and I am I," she protested. "It--it is impossible, Grantley."
His face a.s.sumed its old obstinate squareness as he heard her.
"I don"t want that," she murmured. "I"ll try to be friends. We can understand one another as friends, make allowances, give and forgive.
Friendship"s charitable. Let"s be friends, Grantley."
"You have no love left for me?" he asked, pa.s.sing by her protests.
"For months past I"ve hated you."
"I know that. And you have no love left for me?"
She looked at him again, with fear and shrinking in her eyes.
"Have you forgotten what I did? No, you can"t have forgotten! How can you wish me to love you now? It would be horrible for both of us. You may forgive me, as I do you--what I may have to forgive; but how can we be lovers again? How can we--with that in the past?"
"The past is the past," he said calmly.
She walked away from him a little. When she came back in a minute or so, he saw that she was in strong agitation.
"That"s enough to-night--enough for all time, if you so wish," he said gently. "Only I had to tell you what was in my heart."
"How could you, Grantley?"
"I haven"t said it was easy. I"m coming to believe that the easy things aren"t worth much."
"You could love me again?"
"I"ve never ceased to love you--only I hope I know a bit more about how to do it now."
She stood there the picture of distress and of fear. At last she broke out:
"Ah, I"ve not told you the real thing! I"m afraid Grantley, I"m afraid!
I dare not love you. Because I loved you so beyond all reason and all--all sanity, all this came upon us. And--and I daren"t love you again now, even if I could. Yes, I ought to have learnt something too; perhaps I have. But I daren"t trust myself with my knowledge." She came a step nearer to him, holding out her hands beseechingly. "Friends, friends, Grantley!" she implored. "Then we shall be safe. And our love shall be for Frank. You"ll get to love Frank, won"t you?"
"Frank and I are beginning to hit it off capitally," said Grantley cheerfully. "Well, I shall go in now: we mustn"t leave Christine alone all the evening." He took her hand and kissed it. "So we"re friends?" he asked.
"I"ll try," she faltered. "Yes, surely we can manage that!"
He turned away and left her again gazing down on the village and Old Mill House. He lounged into the drawing-room where Christine sat, with an easy air and a smile on his face.
"A beautiful evening, isn"t it?" asked Christine with a tiny shudder, as she hitched her chair closer to the bit of bright fire and threw a faintly protesting glance at the open window.
"Beautiful weather--and quite settled. I shall enjoy my holiday down here."
"Oh, you"re going to stay down here, and going to have a holiday, are you?" she asked with a lift of her brows.
"Well, hardly a holiday, after all. I"ve got a job to do," he answered as he lit his cigarette--"rather a hard job at my time of life."
"Is it? What is the job?"
"I"m going courting again--and a very pretty woman too," he said.
A rather tremulous smile came on Christine"s face as she looked at him.
"It"s rather a nice amus.e.m.e.nt, isn"t it?" she asked. "And you always had plenty of self-conceit."
"Why, hang it, I thought it was just the opposite this time!" exclaimed Grantley in whimsical annoyance.
Christine laughed.
"I won"t be unamiable. I"ll call it self-confidence, if you insist."
He took a moment to think over her new word.
"Yes, in the end I suppose it does come to that. Look here, Christine; I wish the people who tell you you ought to change your nature would be obliging enough to tell you how to do it."
Christine"s answer might be considered encouraging.
"After all there"s no need to overdo the change," she said. "And there"s one thing in which you"ll never change: you"ll always want the best there is."
"No harm in having a try for it--as soon as you really see what it is,"
he answered, as he strolled off to the smoking-room.
CHAPTER XXV
PICKING UP THE PIECES
Mrs. Bolton was very much upset by what had happened at the Courtlands".
An unwonted and irksome sense of responsibility oppressed her. She discussed the matter with Miss Henderson and made Caylesham come to see her--Miss Pattie Henderson, who knew all about how Sophy"s letter had reached her mother"s hands; and Caylesham, whom Mrs. Bolton had made a party to the joke. It did not seem so good a joke now. She and Pattie were both frightened when they saw to what their pleasantry had led.
Little Sophy"s suffering was not pleasant to think of, and there was an uncomfortable uncertainty about the manner of Harriet"s death. A scheme may prove too successful sometimes. Caylesham had warned Mrs. Bolton that she was playing with dangerous tools. He was not now inclined to let her down too easily, nor to put the kindest interpretation on the searchings of her conscience.
"You always time your fits of morality so well," he observed cynically.
"I don"t suppose poor old Tom"s amusing company just now, and he"s certainly deuced hard up."
Mrs. Bolton looked a very plausible picture of injured innocence, but of course there was something in what Frank Caylesham said; there generally was, though it might not be what you would be best pleased to find. Tom was not lively nor inclined for gaiety, and he had just made a composition with his creditors. On the other hand, Miss Henderson was in funds (having completed her negotiations with the Parmenter family), and had suggested a winter on the Riviera, with herself for hostess. There are, fortunately, moments when the good and the pleasant coincide; the worst of it is that such happy harmonies are apt to come rather late in the day.
"It"s all different now that woman"s gone," observed Mrs. Bolton. "It"s the children now, Frank."
"Supposing it is, why am I to be dragged into it?"
"We must get him to go back to them."
Various feelings combined to make Mrs. Bolton very earnest.