She, feeling that never before had she been mistress of the situation, and that perhaps never again would she have the opportunity, spoke first with a composure which startled herself.
"Why," she asked, "should it be supposed to have anything to do with you whether or not I was going to marry Mr. Ellerton?"
And now Captain Ross moved so abruptly against the mantelpiece that he shifted one of the handleless china teacups out of its place and set the prisms tinkling on the candlesticks.
He opened his mouth, then shut it as if he"d thought better of the answer which he meant to make to this chit. And then, in the tone of stinging reproof which he reserved for some careless error in the reading of some letter at the Honeycomb, he said, looking down upon her, "I should have thought that a girl of your intelligence would have had the sense to guess by this time what my object was in wanting to know what your ideas were on the subject of getting married."
Olwen, with a tiny turn of her head, remained silent, watching the sunset, which could just be seen over the Rival mountains out of the other window. This last remark of Captain Ross"s she was not going to take as a proposal either.
From the lack of expression on her small face no man would have guessed at the happy tumult in the heart under that ribbon-and-satin of a hidden mascot that it rocked.
"Well?" demanded Captain Ross with outward patience. "How much longer do you intend to keep me dangling around and guessing?"
"About what?"
"About whether you"re going to marry _me_ or not," said Captain Ross, dourly.
Olwen stuffed a cushion behind her back and laughed quite naturally.
"But, Captain Ross! You said Marriage was a thing the sensible man looked at from every angle and then decided to cut out. I never imagined----"
"Ah, cut _that_ out," Captain Ross begged her, with the unsmiling mien of one who sees himself about to be routed from his last defences. "You knew all the time; you knew."
"I didn"t!"
"What?" Captain Ross thrust out his jaw. "You ought to know me well enough by this time. You"ve seen me plenty."
"Yes," said Olwen, with feeling, "and always being----"
"Well?"
"Perfectly horrid to me."
""Horrid," you think?" barked Captain Ross. "In the office? You don"t understand that I"m as much on active service there behind a pen as I was when I was able to be behind a gun? "Horrid." Because I didn"t make love to you there, and both of us on duty? If you imagine that I"m the kind of man who"d do that ever, I am afraid you are under a serious misapprehen----"
"But you weren"t always in the office," protested Olwen, quickly, "and you were _always_ horrid to me!"
"When, please?"
"Well, at lunch!"
"Because I only had lunch with you once a week?"
"You didn"t "have lunch _with_ me,"" Olwen demurely reminded him. "You happened to be lunching at the same place on Fridays."
"That"s hair-splitting," snapped Captain Ross.
Exactly as if he never split hairs! As if he had not been splitting hairs for the last six months. That is, the same hair. And with a hatchet.
He felt that he was burying that hatchet now----if she would only let him.
He declared, "You know I only went to that darned little eating-place to see you," and it was with the manner of one who hands over his revolver that he had said it. "I loathe fish."
(But this was not a proposal!)
Olwen, gazing not at him, but through the window at a cl.u.s.ter of yellow crocuses on the lawn, exclaimed softly, "As if you didn"t know that this is the first hint you"ve ever given me of your wanting to see me at all!"
Captain Ross took a step back on the hearthrug. He gave a short and angry laugh. "The fairrrrrst hint?" he cried, as if aghast.
"Of course it is," declared Olwen.
"It"s nothing of the kind," doggedly from the man. "Plenty of other ...
things of that sort."
They were both wrong, and they knew it.
It is unlikely that Olwen had forgotten that Elysian evening on the lagoon when Mr. Brown had pulled and she had sat in the stern-sheets with Captain Ross. To have your hand held in the moonlight tenderly, and for an hour on end, might fairly be called "a hint."
So Captain Ross was right on that point.
But he was wrong on every other.
In the whole of their acquaintance that had been the one isolated instance in which he had failed to be as forbidding as an Army order.
But at that moment (and indeed for several months afterwards) that incident in the boat was not to be referred to by either of them. For some obscure reason both of them felt more shy of that memory than any of fresh experiences.
Quickly Olwen got on with this war in the enemy"s country. "Hints? I"m sure I don"t know what they could have been. That box of chocolates at Les Pins. But I"ve had other boxes of chocolates given to me----"
"I"ve no doubt of that" (with grimness).
"So you can hardly call that a "hint," Captain Ross!"
"Ah!" he said, impatiently. "It"s not what one gives or says to a woman, as you know. It"s the _manner_----"
There was real merriment in Olwen"s laugh at this. "The manner! The _manner_! Well, really! After the scolding and strafing and disapproving! After the way you never came near me if we were out----"
"I did. I did. I sat next you at that concert when Jack Awdas"s girl was singing."
"For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "It was the one and only time."
"It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright"s party, and I wasn"t allowed a look in----"
"So you had a look _at_, most severely," Olwen countered. "At Mrs.
Cartwright"s was when you were the horridest of all. You just sat opposite to me and glared----"
In the dining-room the party of Olwen"s relations sat over their last half-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity.
This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as she clattered in at intervals with hot water or more b.u.t.ter. Breathlessly she asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into the drawing-room for Miss S"Olwen and that t"officer?"