"But Miss Lapham! I may see her again? I may try to convince her that----"
He stopped in distress, and Lapham afterwards told his wife that he kept seeing the face of Irene as it looked when he parted with her in the car; and whenever he was going to say yes, he could not open his lips. At the same time he could not help feeling that Penelope had a right to what was her own, and Sewell"s words came back to him.
Besides, they had already put Irene to the worst suffering. Lapham compromised, as he imagined. "You can come round to-night and see ME, if you want to," he said; and he bore grimly the grat.i.tude that the young man poured out upon him.
Penelope came down to supper and took her mother"s place at the head of the table.
Lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could bear it. Then he asked, "How do you feel to-night, Pen?"
"Oh, like a thief," said the girl. "A thief that hasn"t been arrested yet."
Lapham waited a while before he said, "Well, now, your mother and I want you should hold up on that a while."
"It isn"t for you to say. It"s something I can"t hold up on."
"Yes, I guess you can. If I know what"s happened, then what"s happened is a thing that n.o.body is to blame for. And we want you should make the best of it and not the worst. Heigh? It ain"t going to help Irene any for you to hurt yourself--or anybody else; and I don"t want you should take up with any such crazy notion. As far as heard from, you haven"t stolen anything, and whatever you"ve got belongs to you."
"Has he been speaking to you, father?"
"Your mother"s been speaking to me."
"Has HE been speaking to you?"
"That"s neither here nor there."
"Then he"s broken his word, and I will never speak to him again!"
"If he was any such fool as to promise that he wouldn"t talk to me on a subject"--Lapham drew a deep breath, and then made the plunge--"that I brought up----"
"Did you bring it up?"
"The same as brought up--the quicker he broke his word the better; and I want you should act upon that idea. Recollect that it"s my business, and your mother"s business, as well as yours, and we"re going to have our say. He hain"t done anything wrong, Pen, nor anything that he"s going to be punished for. Understand that. He"s got to have a reason, if you"re not going to have him. I don"t say you"ve got to have him; I want you should feel perfectly free about that; but I DO say you"ve got to give him a reason."
"Is he coming here?"
"I don"t know as you"d call it COMING----"
"Yes, you do, father!" said the girl, in forlorn amus.e.m.e.nt at his shuffling.
"He"s coming here to see ME----"
"When"s he coming?"
"I don"t know but he"s coming to-night."
"And you want I should see him?"
"I don"t know but you"d better."
"All right. I"ll see him."
Lapham drew a long deep breath of suspicion inspired by this acquiescence. "What you going to do?" he asked presently.
"I don"t know yet," answered the girl sadly. "It depends a good deal upon what he does."
"Well," said Lapham, with the hungriness of unsatisfied anxiety in his tone. When Corey"s card was brought into the family-room where he and Penelope were sitting, he went into the parlour to find him. "I guess Penelope wants to see you," he said; and, indicating the family-room, he added, "She"s in there," and did not go back himself.
Corey made his way to the girl"s presence with open trepidation, which was not allayed by her silence and languor. She sat in the chair where she had sat the other night, but she was not playing with a fan now.
He came toward her, and then stood faltering. A faint smile quivered over her face at the spectacle of his subjection. "Sit down, Mr.
Corey," she said. "There"s no reason why we shouldn"t talk it over quietly; for I know you will think I"m right."
"I"m sure of that," he answered hopefully. "When I saw that your father knew of it to-day, I asked him to let me see you again. I"m afraid that I broke my promise to you--technically----"
"It had to be broken." He took more courage at her words. "But I"ve only come to do whatever you say, and not to be an--annoyance to you----"
"Yes, you have to know; but I couldn"t tell you before. Now they all think I should."
A tremor of anxiety pa.s.sed over the young man"s face, on which she kept her eyes steadily fixed.
"We supposed it--it was--Irene----"
He remained blank a moment, and then he said with a smile of relief, of deprecation, of protest, of amazement, of compa.s.sion--
"OH! Never! Never for an instant! How could you think such a thing? It was impossible! I never thought of her. But I see--I see! I can explain--no, there"s nothing to explain! I have never knowingly done or said a thing from first to last to make you think that. I see how terrible it is!" he said; but he still smiled, as if he could not take it seriously. "I admired her beauty--who could help doing that?--and I thought her very good and sensible. Why, last winter in Texas, I told Stanton about our meeting in Canada, and we agreed--I only tell you to show you how far I always was from what you thought--that he must come North and try to see her, and--and--of course, it all sounds very silly!--and he sent her a newspaper with an account of his ranch in it----"
"She thought it came from you."
"Oh, good heavens! He didn"t tell me till after he"d done it. But he did it for a part of our foolish joke. And when I met your sister again, I only admired her as before. I can see, now, how I must have seemed to be seeking her out; but it was to talk of you with her--I never talked of anything else if I could help it, except when I changed the subject because I was ashamed to be always talking of you. I see how distressing it is for all of you. But tell me that you believe me!"
"Yes, I must. It"s all been our mistake----"
"It has indeed! But there"s no mistake about my loving you, Penelope,"
he said; and the old-fashioned name, at which she had often mocked, was sweet to her from his lips.
"That only makes it worse!" she answered.
"Oh no!" he gently protested. "It makes it better. It makes it right.
How is it worse? How is it wrong?"
"Can"t you see? You must understand all now! Don"t you see that if she believed so too, and if she----" She could not go on.
"Did she--did your sister--think that too?" gasped Corey.
"She used to talk with me about you; and when you say you care for me now, it makes me feel like the vilest hypocrite in the world. That day you gave her the list of books, and she came down to Nantasket, and went on about you, I helped her to flatter herself--oh! I don"t see how she can forgive me. But she knows I can never forgive myself! That"s the reason she can do it. I can see now," she went on, "how I must have been trying to get you from her. I can"t endure it! The only way is for me never to see you or speak to you again!" She laughed forlornly. "That would be pretty hard on you, if you cared."
"I do care--all the world!"
"Well, then, it would if you were going to keep on caring. You won"t long, if you stop coming now."