She looked at him earnestly.
"Really," she said, "you are a strange, stolid young man. I wonder," she went on, smiling into his face, "are you in love with my sister?"
Tavernake made no immediate response, only something flashed for a moment in his eyes which puzzled her.
"Why do you look at me like that?" she demanded. "You are not angry with me for asking?"
"No, I am not angry," he replied. "It isn"t that. But you must know--you must see!"
Then she indeed did see that he was laboring under a very great emotion.
She leaned towards him, laughing softly.
"Now you are really becoming interesting," she murmured. "Tell me--tell me all about it."
"I don"t know what love is!" Tavernake declared fiercely. "I don"t know what it means to be in love!"
Again she laughed in his face.
"Are you so sure?" she whispered.
She saw the veins stand out upon his temples, watched the pa.s.sion which kept him at first tongue-tied.
"Sure!" he muttered. "Who can be sure when you look like that!"
He held out his arms. With a swift little backward movement she flitted away and leaned against the table.
"What a brother-in-law you would make!" she laughed. "So steady, so respectable, alas! so serious! Dear Mr. Tavernake, I wish you joy. As a matter of fact, you and Beatrice are very well suited for one another."
The telephone bell rang. She moved over and held the receiver to her ear. Her face changed. After the first few words to which she listened, it grew dark with anger.
"You mean to say that Professor Franklin has not been in since lunch-time?" she exclaimed. "I left word particularly that I should require him to-night. Is Major Post there, then? No? Mr. Crease--no?
Nor Mr. Faulkes? Not one of them! Very well, ring me up directly the professor comes in, or any of them."
She replaced the receiver with a gesture of annoyance. Tavernake was astonished at the alteration in her expression. The smile had gone, and with its pa.s.sing away lines had come under her eyes and about her mouth.
Without a word to him she strode away into her bedroom. Tavernake was just wondering whether he should retire, when she came back.
"Listen, Mr. Tavernake," she said, "how far away are your rooms?"
"Down at Chelsea," he answered, "about two miles and a half."
"Take a taxi and drive there," she commanded, "or stop. You will find my car outside. I will telephone down to say that you are to use it. Change into your evening clothes and come back for me. I want you to take me out to supper."
He looked at her in amazement. She stamped her foot.
"Don"t stand there hesitating!" she ordered. "Do as I say! You don"t expect I am going to help you to buy your wretched property if you refuse me the simplest of favors? Hurry, I say! Hurry!"
"I am really very sorry," Tavernake interposed, "but I do not possess a dress suit. I would go, with pleasure, but I haven"t got such a thing."
She looked at him for a moment incredulously. Then she broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. She sat down upon the edge of a couch and wiped the tears from her eyes.
"Oh, you strange, you wonderful person!" she exclaimed. "You want to buy an estate and you want to borrow twelve thousand pounds, and you know where Beatrice is and you won"t tell me, and you are fully convinced, because you burst into a house through the wall, that you saved poor Pritchard from being poisoned, and you don"t possess a dress suit! Never mind, as it happens it doesn"t matter about the dress suit. You shall take me out as you are."
Tavernake felt in his pockets and remembered that he had only thirty shillings with him.
"Here, carry my purse," she said carelessly. "We are going downstairs to the smaller restaurant. I have been traveling since six o"clock, and I am starving."
"But how about my clothes?" Tavernake objected. "Will they be all right?"
"It doesn"t matter where we are going," she answered. "You look very well as you are. Come and let me put your tie straight."
She came close to him and her fingers played for a moment with his tie.
She was very near to him and she laughed deliberately into his face.
Tavernake held himself quite stiff and felt foolish. He also felt absurdly happy.
"There," she remarked, when she had arranged it to her satisfaction, "you look all right now. I wonder," she added, half to herself, "what you do look like. Something Colonial and forceful, I think. Never mind, help me on with my cloak and come along. You are a most respectable-looking escort, and a very useful one."
Although Tavernake was nominally the host, it was Elizabeth who selected the table and ordered the supper. There were very few other guests in the room, the majority being down in the larger restaurant, but among these few Tavernake noticed two of the girls from the chorus at the Atlas. Elizabeth had chosen a table from which she had a view of the door, and she took the seat facing it. From the first Tavernake felt certain that she was watching for some one.
"Talk to me now, please, about this speculation," she insisted. "I should like to know all about it, and whether you are sure that I shall get ten per cent for my money."
Tavernake was in no way reluctant. It was a safe topic for conversation, and one concerning which he had plenty to say. But after a time she stopped him.
"Well," she said, "I have discovered at any rate one subject on which you can be fluent. Now I have had enough of building properties, please, and house building. I should like to hear a little about Beatrice."
Tavernake was dumb.
"I do not wish to talk about Beatrice," he declared, "until I understand the cause of this estrangement between you."
Her eyes flashed angrily and her laugh sounded forced.
"Not even talk of her! My dear friend," she protested, "you scarcely repay the confidence I am placing in you!"
"You mean the money?"
"Precisely," she continued. "I trust you, why I do not know--I suppose because I am something of a physiognomist--with twelve thousand pounds of my hard-earned savings. You refuse to trust me with even a few simple particulars about the life of my own sister. Come, I don"t think that things are quite as they should be between us."
"Do you know where I first met your sister?" Tavernake asked.
She shook her head pettishly.
"How should I? You told me nothing."
"She was staying in a boarding-house where I lived," Tavernake went on.
"I think I told you that but nothing else. It was a cheap boarding-house but she had not enough money to pay for her meals. She was tired of life. She was in a desperate state altogether."
"Are you trying to tell me, or rather trying not to tell me, that Beatrice was mad enough to think of committing suicide?" Elizabeth inquired.
"She was in the frame of mind when such a step was possible," he answered, gravely. "You remember that night when I first saw you in the chemist"s shop across the street? She had been very ill that evening, very ill indeed. You could see for yourself the effect meeting you had upon her."