"Oh--monstrous!" she murmured.
"Of course, it"s unthinkable!"
"Indeed it is not," said Bridget. "If you only knew how I have lain awake thinking of it. Still, I wouldn"t say "yes." I have kept the poor dear man in suspense till your return. He is quite ridiculously--well, in love with me, I suppose he would call it."
"Obviously you are nothing of the kind," suggested Mark.
"In love--with Colonel Faversham!" she cried, with a laugh. "You know, Mark, he is most horridly jealous."
"So there"s some one else?"
"Only you," she said, and Mark started to his feet.
"Jealous of me! Oh, good Lord!" he exclaimed, and suddenly became aware that Bridget was keeping him under close observation.
"Idiotic of him, isn"t it?" she remarked, continuing hastily, "but you haven"t given me your serious opinion. I want you to make a cool survey of the situation."
"I thought I had," said Mark. "Of course, you must refuse."
"That is all very well," she urged, "but there"s something else you must tell me. Supposing that I refuse to marry the colonel, what is to become of me?"
"There are your aunts at Sandbay!"
"Oh yes, my dear little Dresden china aunts! And, you know, Mark, there"s the River Thames. I would as soon plunge into the one as take a train to the others."
"What is to prevent you from staying here?" he asked. "If you are tired of London, try Paris again. You can surely go where you please."
"How few are lucky enough for that!"
"I thought," said Mark, "you had the world before you."
"More likely the workhouse," answered Bridget.
"You don"t mean to say you"re--you"re hard up!" he cried, returning to his seat on the sofa.
"Oh, I have plenty of money at the bank," she explained. "Mark, I detest talking about it, but I really should love to tell you. During mother"s lifetime, you must remember how comfortably we used to live.
I always had everything I wanted--for that matter, so I have until this moment. Naturally," Bridget continued, "I believed that the house and everything were kept up by father"s books."
"Wasn"t that the case?" asked Mark.
"As a matter of fact," said Bridget, "they brought in very little money indeed."
"Surely his name was very well known!"
"Yes, and he had heaps of friends who thought ever so much of him.
There are hundreds of press cuttings praising him up to the skies.
During the last few months of his life he scarcely read anything else.
The doctors gave his illness a long name--I dare say you would understand if I could remember; but what killed him was a broken heart."
"How was that?" asked Mark.
"What we really lived upon," answered Bridget, "was my mother"s income.
That died with her--all but a small sum, which she left to me. We were compelled to leave Crowborough, and father seemed to droop like some transplanted flower. We wandered from place to place, and I suppose he was extravagant. I seem to take after him. Neither of us could bother about economy and that sort of thing. He felt the change dreadfully, and the tragedy was that he couldn"t pull himself together in his necessity. Instead of writing better, he wrote much worse. He could satisfy neither himself nor any one else. His sales fell off; he saw he wasn"t doing good work. I believe that broke his heart."
"Didn"t he leave you anything?" asked Mark.
"Nothing whatever. He knew he was dying and told me to communicate with his old friend Mr. Frankfort, a solicitor. But there was nothing due from publishers--not a penny; so it was fortunate I had the money that had been left by my mother, wasn"t it?"
"Do you mind," suggested Mark, "telling me how much that was?"
"I don"t mind telling you anything," she said. "I want you to know all about me. I love to tell you. It was invested to bring in a hundred and twenty pounds a year; but what is that?"
"Not enough to live upon as you are living here," he admitted.
"Nor anywhere else," she replied. "It"s no earthly use, Mark. I am spoiled for that. I draw cheques when I want any money, and now and then I get a letter from the bank manager to say my account is overdrawn. I go to see him; my deed-box is fetched up from the realms below, the manager sells something for me, and so I go along till the next time."
"Then you are living on your capital!" cried Mark.
"What else can I live upon?" she demanded.
"The interest--naturally."
"Now, do you really think I look the sort of person to live on a hundred pounds a year?" she said, throwing out her hands.
"But if you haven"t got any more! Don"t you realize," he suggested, "that the day is bound to come when you will find yourself out in the cold?"
"Oh yes," she said, with a sigh. "That"s when I get a fit of the miserables. But something is certain to happen."
"You antic.i.p.ate a miracle?"
"It wouldn"t be far out of the natural order of things," she replied.
"You expect some one--one of your aunts, for instance--to leave you a fortune!" said Mark.
"Oh dear, no! I am not in the least likely to wish any one to die.
Really I think you are rather stupid this evening. There might be a marriage, you know. Such things do happen!"
"Anyhow," he answered, "you mustn"t let yourself be frightened into marrying Colonel Faversham."
Rising from her end of the sofa, Bridget glided to his, and standing close in front of him, so that her skirt brushed his knees, she looked insinuatingly into his face.
"Will you," she said, "kindly tell me what I am to do, Mr. Driver?"
CHAPTER XI
MARK REPORTS PROGRESS