Tell me now honestly, would it be possible to break off this engagement with your cousin?"
At this she shrinks a little from him, and a distressed look comes into her beautiful eyes.
"What are you saying?" she says, in a half-frightened way. "It has been going on for so long, this engagement--_always_, as it seems to me. How should I break it off? And then there is Uncle Christopher, he would be unhappy; he would not forgive, and--besides--"
Her voice dies away. Memory vague but sharp, comes to her. If she should now deliberately discard Roger, how will it be with her in the future?
And yet what if he should be glad of his freedom; should welcome it with open arms? If, indeed, he should be only waiting for her to take the initiative, and give him his release!
This reflection carries its sting; there is madness in it. She closes her lips firmly, and her breath comes quickly and uncertainly.
"It will be better for you later on," breaks in Gower, tempting her, surely but quietly. "When you are married--it is all very well for you now, when escape at any moment is possible; but when you are irrevocably bound to an unloving husband how will it be with you? Other women have tried it, and how has it ended with them? Not as it will with you, I know; you are far above the many; but still your life will drag with you--there will be no joy! no sympathy! no--Dulce have pity on yourself (I do not say on _me_), and save yourself while you can."
She makes a last faint protest.
"How do you _know_ he does not love me?" she asks, painfully. "How can you be sure?--and at least"--wistfully--"we are accustomed to each other, we have known each other all our lives, and we have quarrelled _so_ hard already that we can scarcely do anything more--the worst with us is over."
"It will be different then," says Gower--he is speaking from his heart in all honesty. "Now you belong to him only in an improbable fashion; then--"
"It is your belief that he does not love me at all?" interrupts she, tapping her foot impatiently upon the ground.
"It is my belief," returns he slowly.
Almost as he speaks, some one steps from the lighted room beyond on the balcony and approaches them. It is Roger.
"This is ours, I think," he says, addressing Dulce, and alluding to the waltz just commencing.
"Is it--what a pity; I had quite forgotten," she says, wilfully. "I am afraid I have half promised it to Mr. Gower, and you know _he_ dances charmingly."
The emphasis not to be mistaken. The remark, of course, is meant alone for Roger, and he alone hears it. Gower has gone away from them a yard or two and is buried in thought. As Roger dances divinely her remark is most uncalled for and vexes him more than he would care to confess.
"Don"t let me interfere with you and your new friend," he says, lifting his brows. "If you want to dance all night with Gower, by all means do it; there is really no earthly reason why you shouldn"t."
Here, as his own name falls upon his ears, Gower turns and looks at Roger expectantly.
"I absolve you willingly from your engagement to me," goes on Roger, his eyes fixed upon his wilful cousin, his face cold and hard. The extreme calmness of his tone misleads her. Her lips tighten. A light born of pa.s.sionate anger darkens her gray eyes.
"Do you?" she says, a peculiar meaning in her tone.
"From this engagement only," returns he, hastily.
"Thank you. Of your own free will, then, you resign me, and give me permission to dance with whom I will."
The warm blood is flaming in her cheeks. He has thrown her over very willingly. He is evidently glad to escape the impending waltz. How shall she be avenged for this indignity?
"Mr. Gower," she says, turning prettily to Stephen, "will you get me out of my difficulty? and will you dance this waltz with me? You see," with a brave effort to suppress some emotion that is threatening to overpower her, "I have to throw myself upon your mercy."
"You confer a very great honor upon me," says Gower, gently. The courtesy of his manner is such a contrast to Roger"s ill-temper, that the latter loses the last grain of self-control he possesses. There is, too, a little smile of conscious malice upon Gower"s lips that grows even stronger as his eyes rest upon the darkened countenance of his whilom friend. His whilom friend, seeing it, lets wrath burn even fiercer within his breast.
"You are not engaged to any one else?" says Dulce, sweetly, forgetting how a moment since she had told Roger she had half promised Gower the dance in question.
"Even if I was, I am at _your_ service now and always," says Gower.
"As my dancing displeases you so excessively," says Roger, slowly, "it seems a shame to condemn you to keep the rest of your engagements with me. I think I have my name down upon your card for two more waltzes.
Forget that, and give them to Gower, or any one else that suits you. For my part I do not care to--" He checks himself too late.
"Go on," says Dulce, coldly, in an ominously calm fashion. "You had more to say, surely; you do not care to dance them with _me_ you meant to say. Isn"t it?"
"You can think as you wish, of course."
"All the world is free to do that. Then I may blot your name from my card for the rest of the evening?"
"Certainly."
"If those dances are free, Miss Blount, may I ask you for them?" says Stephen, pleasantly.
"You can have them with pleasure," replies she, smiling kindly at him.
"Don"t stay too long in the night air, Dulce," says Roger, with the utmost unconcern, turning to go indoors again. This is the unkindest cut of all. If he had gone away angry, silent, revengeful, she might perhaps have forgiven him, but this careful remembrance of her, this calm and utterly indifferent concern for her comfort fills her with vehement anger.
The blood forsakes her lips, and her eyes grow bright with pa.s.sionate tears.
"Why do you take things so much to heart?" says Stephen, in a low voice.
"Do you care so greatly then about an unpleasant speech from him? I should have thought you might have grown accustomed to his _brusquerie_ by this."
"He wasn"t brusque just now," says Dulce. "He was very kind, was he not?
Careful about my catching cold, and that."
"_Very_," says Gower, significantly. "Yet there are tears in your eyes.
What a baby you are."
"No, I am not," says Dulce, mournfully. "A baby is an adorable thing, and I am very far from being that."
"If babies are to be measured by their adorableness, I should say you are the very biggest baby I ever saw," declares Mr. Gower, with such an amount of settled conviction in his tone that Dulce, in spite of the mortification that is still rankling in her breast, laughs aloud.
Delighted with his success, Gower laughs, too, and taking her hand draws it within his arm.
"Come, do not let us forget Roger gave you to me for this dance," he says. "If only for that act of grace, I forgive him all his misdeeds."
With a last lingering glance at the beauty of the night, together they return to the ballroom.
CHAPTER XV.
"I would that I were low laid in my grave."
--KING JOHN.
"Proteus, I love thee in my heart of hearts."
--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.