"Ah!" said Caffyn, "from one another."
"No, we were not; and if you are going to be cynical, and satirical, and all that, you can go away. Well, sit down, then, and behave yourself. What, must you go, Mr. Ashburn? Good-bye, then. Mr. Caffyn, I want you to tell me what you _really_ think about----"
Mark heard no more than this; he was glad to escape, to get away from Caffyn"s scrutiny. "He looked as if he knew I was a humbug!" he thought afterwards; and also to think at his leisure over this new discovery, and all it meant for him.
He knew her name now; he saw a prospect of meeting her at some time or other in the house he had just left; but perhaps he might not even have to wait for that.
This little girl, whose childish letter he had tossed aside a few days since in his blindness, who else could she be but the owner of the dog after which he had clambered up the railway slope? And he had actually been about to neglect her appeal!
Well, he would write now. Who could say what might not come of it? At all events, _she_ would read his letter.
That letter gave Mark an infinite deal of trouble. After attentively reading the little story to which it referred, he sat down to write, and tore up sheet after sheet in disgust, for he had never given much study to the childish understanding, with its unexpected deeps and shallows, and found the task of writing down to it go much against the grain. But the desire of satisfying a more fastidious critic than Dolly gave him at last a kind of inspiration, and the letter he did send, with some misgiving, could hardly have been better written for the particular purpose.
He was pleasantly rea.s.sured as to this a day or two later by another little note from Dolly, asking him to come to tea at Kensington Park Gardens on any afternoon except Monday or Thursday, and adding (evidently by external suggestion) that her mother and sister would be pleased to make his acquaintance.
Mark read this with a thrill of eager joy. What he had longed for had come to pa.s.s, then; he was to see her, speak with her, once more. At least he was indebted to "Illusion" for this result, which a few months since seemed of all things the most unlikely. This time, perhaps, she would not leave him without a word or sign, as when last they met; he might be allowed to come again; even in time to know her intimately.
And he welcomed this piece of good fortune as a happy omen for the future.
CHAPTER XIV.
IN THE SPRING.
Mark lost no time in obeying Dolly"s summons, and it was with an exhilaration a little tempered by a nervousness to which he was not usually subject that he leaped into the dipping and lurching hansom that was to carry him to Kensington Park Gardens.
As Mark drove through the Park across the Serpentine, and saw the black branches of the trees looking as if they had all been sprinkled with a feathery green powder, and noticed the new delicacy in the bright-hued gra.s.s, he hailed these signs as fresh confirmation of the approach of summer--a summer that might prove a golden one for him.
But as he drew nearer Notting Hill, his spirits sank again. What if this opportunity were to collapse as hopelessly as the first? Mabel would of course have forgotten him--would she let him drop indifferently as before? He felt far from hopeful as he rang the bell.
He asked for Miss Dorothy Langton, giving his name as "Mr. Ernstone,"
and was shown into a little room filled with the pretty contrivances which the modern young lady collects around her. He found Dolly there alone, in a very stately and self-possessed mood.
"You can bring up tea here, Champion," she said, "and some tea-cake--_you_ like tea-cake of course," she said to Mark, with something of afterthought. "Mother and Mabel are out, calling or something," she added, "so we shall be quite alone. And now sit down there in that chair and tell me everything you know about fairies."
Mark"s heart sank--this was not at all what he had hoped for; but Dolly had thrown herself back in her own chair, with such evident expectation, and a persuasion that she had got hold of an authority on fairy-lore, that he did not dare to expostulate--although in truth his acquaintance with the subject was decidedly limited.
"You can begin now," said Dolly calmly, as Mark stared blankly into his hat.
"Well," he said, "what do you want to know about them?"
"_All_ about them," said Dolly, with the air of a little person accustomed to instant obedience; Mark"s letter had not quite dispelled her doubts, and she wanted to be quite certain that such cases as that of the sugar prince were by no means common.
"Well," said Mark again, clearing his throat, "they dance round in rings, you know, and live inside flowers, and play tricks with people--that is," he added, with a sort of idea that he must not encourage superst.i.tion, "they did once--of course there are no such things now."
"Then how was it that that little girl you knew--who was not me--ate one up?"
"He was the last one," said Mark.
"But how did he get turned into sugar? Had he done anything wrong?"
"That"s how it was."
"What was it--he hadn"t told a story, had he?"
"It"s exactly what he _had_ done," said Mark, accepting this solution gratefully; "an _awful_ story!"
"What was the story?" Dolly demanded at this, and Mark floundered on, beginning to consider Dolly, for all her pretty looks and ways, a decided little nuisance.
"He--he said the Queen of the Fairies squinted," he stammered in his extremity.
"Then it was she who turned him into sugar?"
"Of course it was," said Mark.
"But you said he was the last fairy left!" persisted the terrible Dolly.
"Did I?" said Mark miserably; "I mean the last but one--she was the _other_."
"Then who was there to tell the story to?" Dolly cross-examined, and Mark quailed, feeling that any more explanation would probably land him in worse difficulties.
"I don"t think you know very much about it, after all," she said with severity. "I suppose you put all you knew into the story. But you"re quite sure there was no fairy inside the figure _I_ ate, aren"t you?"
"Oh yes," said Mark, "I--I happen to know that."
"_That"s_ all right, then," said Dolly, with a little sigh of relief.
"Was that the only fairy story you know?"
"Yes," Mark hastened to explain, in deadly fear lest he might be called upon for another.
"Oh," said Dolly, "then we"d better have tea"--for the door had opened.
"It"s not Champion after all," she cried; "it"s Mabel. I never heard you come back, Mabel."
And Mark turned to realise his dearest hopes and find himself face to face once more with Mabel.
She came in, looking even lovelier, he thought, in her fresh spring toilette than in the winter furs she had worn when he had seen her last, bent down to kiss Dolly, and then glanced at him with the light of recognition coming into her grey eyes.
"This is Mr. Ernstone, Mab," said Dolly.
The pink in Mabel"s cheeks deepened slightly; the author of the book which had stirred her so unusually was the young man who had not thought it worth his while to see any more of them. Probably had he known who had written to him, he would not have been there now, and this gave a certain distance to her manner as she spoke.
"We have met before, Mr. Ernstone," she said, giving him her ungloved hand. "Very likely you have forgotten when and how, but I am sure Dolly had not, had you, Dolly?"
But Dolly had, having been too much engrossed with her dog on the day of the breakdown to notice appearances, even of his preserver, very particularly. "_When_ did I see him before, Mabel?" she whispered.