"But why?"
"Twenty-six!" Her eyes were still closed. "I am thirty," she said softly. "That is why."
He felt quite bewildered; in a maze as to her meaning. "I know you"ve had a bad time, too," he said again. "You"ll tell me all about it, won"t you? Don"t join the bridge crowd. They"ll be playing there for hours, and we can sit here and have ourselves to ourselves. Do! Do! I want to know such a lot, and you"ll tell me all."
She drew her hand gently away. "Will I?" she whispered. "Will I, truly?"
He seized her hand a second time, "Yes--yes, you will. You"re going to be so kind--so good--to me. You"re going to let me have your trouble to think of instead of mine. I"m so tired of the ceaseless agony of mine. I didn"t do anything, you know. "Fore G.o.d, I didn"t do anything. It was all a plot, and now they"ve ruined her life and mine. Perhaps it was a plot with you, too."
"No," she breathed. "With me it was a plan."
"Never mind the difference," he protested. "They say, you know, that I was in love with the mother. I wasn"t. Really, I wasn"t. But they told her and the engagement was broken. It was all the most horrible thing imaginable. You"ll hear it on all sides.
"Of course no one would believe that story about you, but every one believes the one about me. They haven"t ruined you, but they have ruined me. And then people think that Scotland should have helped me." He paused, quite pale, his voice shaking.
His hand had closed harder and harder on hers, and now he drew it nearer. When he had pressed it between both of his own for a long minute, he felt a painful point within his palm, and, freeing her, he looked. On her third finger sparkled a diamond cross.
It was a great, awkward thing to be attached to a ring, although lovely enough in itself. The cross had marked his flesh. He turned her hand and saw that the ring was shaped and carven like a crown--a crown with points.
"The cross and the crown?" he questioned then. "Your own design?"
"His mother"s," she said, still with closed eyes. "If I had been his wife it would have been mine. But as I can never be his wife he gave it to me to wear--because I loved him."
"The man who backed out?" Carleigh asked.
"The same man," she made answer.
"Stupid idiot!"
"With all my heart."
With which she opened her eyes and rose abruptly.
"You are very young," she said in the most casual of tones. "Oh, dear, but you are so very young. When you"ve gone further on in life you"ll know that very few of those that really love can ever marry. I almost think that it is the first sign of a great love to be separated. And a good thing too. It leaves one one"s dreams."
The tone startled him, but the matter of her speech suited. She moved toward the fire. Kneedrock stood there, facing the chimney-piece.
"What are you doing?" she asked him, gaily. "Have you stopped playing?"
"They don"t want me just now," he said.
Carleigh felt annoyed; but he followed close after her.
"We were talking of such interesting things," she went on, still addressing the viscount"s back.
"I dare say. What for instance?" he asked, without turning.
"I"ve told Sir Caryll that you will tell him all of my story," she pursued, ignoring the question. "You will--won"t you?"
"The whole of it?"
"Yes."
"I hope that it will interest him more than it does me."
"If it bores you to repeat it, you needn"t," said Nina, gently. "But it is rather dramatic, you know. I mean that night, and all that happened."
"Poor Darling!" muttered Kneedrock.
Carleigh felt most uncomfortable.
"Nibbetts was there, you know," she explained tranquilly. "He was always a friend of the family."
"We"re first cousins," said the viscount shortly.
"And once--once, in India--he fought for my good name," she continued, easily.
"The good name of the family," the cousin corrected--unnecessarily it seemed to Sir Caryll.
"It came to the same thing," she added.
Carleigh wished that the other man would go back to the game and thus end this bewilderingly frank conversation. And the next instant he did, and they two were alone again.
"You _have_ had a hard time," he said, quickly. "I fancy I ought to know all about the story, Mrs. Darling, but I don"t. I haven"t any connections in the army. We are all diplomatic people. It"s very stupid in us, I suppose."
"Not quite that," she returned. "I"ve sometimes thought that we are stupid to go in for the army so strongly. But it is all an affair of blood and bigness, I imagine."
He laughed. "Blood and bigness," he repeated. "How cleverly you put it!
And with us it is--"
"Brains and littleness," she cut in.
Then he laughed again, outright. So outright that those at the tables heard, threw up their heads, listened, and then bowed their heads again, masking significant smiles.
"There is no one like Nina," Lady Bellingdown commented under her breath.
"Oh, he is saved, if you mean that," Sir George declared lightly.
"I told you so," reminded the duke, proudly. "I said: "Nina will wake him up." She always wakes everybody up. She says what you wouldn"t think she"d say, and it wakes one up most uncommonly."
And they went forward with their game. For that matter so did Mrs.
Darling and Carleigh.
"Are you stopping here for long?" he asked.
"For as long as I can stand it."
"You mean--"