"Done! If you can"t, then I"m not to expect you. That it?"
"That is it--precisely."
"Good-bye, Niddy, old girl. Keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up. By the way, if you want a real good tune for a Charity sing-song, a real rouser, try "Nancy Lee.""
He was gone, humming vigorously that new-fangled favourite.
"Sit down, Mr. Vivian," said Lady Enid, looking her right size. "We"ve got a lot to say to one another."
"I have to be home at five," replied the Prophet, abstractedly.
Lady Enid begin to appear a trifle thin.
"Why? How tiresome! I didn"t think you really meant it."
"It is very, very tiresome."
He spoke with marked uneasiness, and remained standing with the air of one in readiness for the punctual call of the hangman.
"What is it?" continued Lady Enid, with her usual inquisitiveness.
"I have, as I said, a--a small gathering at home at that hour," said the Prophet, repeating his formula morosely.
"A gathering--what of?"
"People--persons, that is."
"What--a party?"
"Two parties," replied the Prophet, instinctively giving Mr. Sagittarius and Madame their undoubted due. "Two."
"Two parties at the same time--and in the afternoon! How very odd!"
"They will look very odd, very--in Berkeley Square," responded the Prophet, in a tone of considerable dejection. "I don"t know, I"m sure, what Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus will think. Still I"ve given strict orders that they are to be let in. What else could I do?"
He gazed at Lady Enid in a demanding manner.
"What else could I possibly do under the circ.u.mstances?" he repeated.
"Sit down, dear Mr. Vivian," she answered, with her peculiar Scotch la.s.sie seductiveness, "and tell me, your sincere friend, what the circ.u.mstances are."
Unluckily her curiosity had led her to overdo persuasion. That cooing interpolation of "your sincere friend"--too strongly honeyed--suddenly recalled the Prophet to the fact that Lady Enid was not, and could never be, his confidante in the matter that obsessed him. He therefore sat down, but with an abrupt air of indefinite social liveliness, and exclaimed, not unlike Mr. Robert Green,--
"Well, and how are things going with you, dear Lady Enid?"
She jumped under the transition as under a whip.
"Me! But--these parties you were telling me about?"
But the Prophet remembered his oath. He was a strictly honourable little man, and never swore carelessly.
"Parties!" he said. "You and I are too old friends to waste our life in chattering about such London nonsense."
"Then we"ll talk of yesterday," said Lady Enid, very firmly.
The Prophet looked rather blank.
"Yes," she repeated. "Yesterday. I"ve guessed your secret."
"Which one?" he cried, much startled.
"Which?" she said reproachfully. "Oh, Mr. Vivian--and I thought you trusted in me."
The Prophet was silent. The third daughter of the clergyman had often made that remark to him when they were nearly engaged. It recalled bygone memories.
"That"s what I thought," she added with pressure.
"I"m sorry," the Prophet murmured, rather obstinately.
"I always think," she continued, with deliberate expansiveness, "that nearly all the miseries of the world come about from people not trusting in--in people."
"Or from people trusting in the wrong people. Which is it?" said the Prophet, not without slyness.
She began to look thin, but checked herself.
"Tell me," she said, "why did you stop me yesterday when I was beginning to say to Sir Tiglath that I was sure Malkiel was a man and not a syndicate?"
"Did I stop you?" said the Prophet, artlessly.
"Yes, with your eyes."
"Because--because I was sure--that is, certain you couldn"t be sure."
"How could you be certain?"
"How?"
"Yes."
"Well, how is one certain of anything?" said the Prophet, rather feebly.
"How are you certain that I"m Miss Minerva Partridge?"
"Because you told me so yourself, because I"ve seen you come into Jellybrand"s for your letters, because--"
"Haven"t I seen Malkiel come into Jellybrand"s for his?"
This unexpected retort threw the Prophet upon his beam ends. But he remembered his oath even in that very awkward position.