He stooped and kissed her, as was his habit now, and which she had never forbidden him. Yet it was more the cool kiss of a brother than the fervid lover"s kiss--a feat acquired and accomplished by practice of the most rigid control.
"You can"t fancy whom I saw to-day--" he began, bursting with what he believed would prove for her an interesting experience.
"Dr. Pottow," she hazarded.
"That"s very wide," he said. "I often see Dr. Pottow. I haven"t seen this person in five--no, six--years."
She tried twice more and failed.
"Your friend of that summer in Simla--Mrs. Ramsay."
"My stars!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "Where? What was she doing? I thought--"
"She called on me in Bath--reminded me of that summer, and wished to sell me some shares in a paper called _British Society_, of which I"d never--"
Nina leaned suddenly forward and clutched his arm. "Wait!" she cried.
"Wait!" She was winking and thinking very fast. She remembered reading of Mr. Ramsay"s trial and sentence, and she remembered _British Society_ and its story about the Veynols.
She recalled, too, the ident.i.ty of Christian names--Mrs. Ramsay"s was Sibylla, and so was Mrs. Veynol"s. And they were both Americans.
"She isn"t Mrs. Ramsay now?" she questioned.
"No. She"s Mrs. Miles O"Connor. She said--"
But Nina wouldn"t hear what she said just then. She was too busy adjusting her mind to what it all meant. So it was Jane Ramsay that, as Rosamond Veynol, had married Caryll Carleigh! And it was Sibylla Ramsay that had made all the trouble. It didn"t seem possible.
"Her husband was an editor on _British Society_," Nina suggested. "I thought Sibylla had more ambition. And you say she--"
"He isn"t her husband any more. She has been to the States and secured another divorce. It seems she bought the paper after she married him, put him in sole charge, and he gathered in all the income and spent it on Gaiety girls. She advised me to take the journal over, and with its aid secure for myself a baronetcy."
But Nina was still thinking. All she could say was: "Sibylla Ramsay--Sibylla Veynol! Poor Caryll"s dreadful mother-in-law!" Then abruptly she asked: "Did she mention her daughter? You remember Jane."
"Yes. She"s living with her daughter. Lady Carleigh, you know. She said her son-in-law, Sir Caryll, was extremely influential, and if I"d buy the shares he would use his influence to get me the baronetcy. As if I"d give tuppence for it!"
He paused, and Nina remained thoughtfully silent. Poor Caryll! So his mother-in-law was on his hands once more.
Gerald looked up at the moon, and a wave of sentiment swept over him. He had seen it dozens of times since that night in Simla. But it had never seemed so much the same moon as it did this night.
Probably it was because of his meeting with Mrs. Ramsay, which brought back the Simla days and nights more vividly than ever before.
On such a night as this he had asked Nina Darling to bolt with him, and she had cruelly sent him away hopeless. Since meeting her again he had let his actions rather than his words speak for him, and she had been very kind.
He didn"t wish to spoil it all again--to be sent away with his new-risen hopes all a-droop. He had made up his mind to wait until Kneedrock had been a year under the gray stones of Dumphreys Abbey, but it was hard to resist the sentimental influence of this night and this moon--this Simla moon.
"I don"t want Mrs. O"Connor"s paper," he said at length dreamily, "or her son-in-law"s influence, or a baronetcy, or anything else in all the world except--"
Nina knew those tones. She had heard them rise from many hearts in her time, and they roused her from the reverie into which she had fallen.
Hitherto they had come to her as the final warning signal.
It had been her habit at this point to gird on her armor and draw her sword for the supreme blow of severance. But somehow there seemed no armor at her command now, and her sword was dulled and rusted and wouldn"t fit her hand.
So she looked up at the moon, too, and in a voice that had in it the very identical tone, only very low and very soft, she echoed his last word--echoed it with the slightest questioning inflexion.
"Except?"
He was conscious of the encouragement at once, and then there was no holding him.
"Ah, I needn"t tell you, dearest," he said pa.s.sionately, dropping on his knees beside her. "You know--you have always known."
The words of Caryll Carleigh came back to her: "If he was dead he"d have a hold over you that would keep you straight."
She hadn"t believed them then. Kneedrock had been dead, and it hadn"t kept her straight--dead, that is, so far as knowledge and belief were concerned. But now everything within her told her that Carleigh was right.
She was sure she would never flirt again, or ever want to. Still, she was not sure that she could give Gerald Andrews all that he craved--all, indeed, that he deserved.
"I"m only a husk," she said dispiritedly. "I"m a poor thing to want.
Once you told me my heart was a stone. It isn"t even that now. I haven"t any heart at all."
One arm he had slipped about her, his hand pressed above her waist. He could feel her heart pounding.
"I"ll find it and keep it," he said; growing more sure.
"But it will never beat again."
"I"ll make it."
"Never fast, though, I"m sure."
Then he kissed her--and it wasn"t at all a brother"s kiss this time.
"There!" he cried. "I"ve found it already. I"ve made it beat, too--beat fast. I"m going to keep it--forever!" And he kissed her again.
When he released her she was panting. "I wouldn"t have believed it!" she gasped, her eyes shining. "You are a miracle-worker. I can feel it myself now. But don"t give it back to me ever, ever!"
And then she kissed him.
For a long, long moment--she sitting, he kneeling, their cheeks warmly close--a delicious silence enwrapped them. The sweetest of all emotions was at its flood!
Eventually it was Nina who spoke, happy tears in her violet blue eyes.
"I do hope you are not going to weep," she said.
THE END