The girl caught her breath. "Why--sometimes I"ve thought so."
"You"ve known it, as well as you know you"re alive. If I hadn"t come into the beastly t.i.tle I"d have asked you to marry me long ago. It was your own fault I didn"t ask you, before my Cousin Eric died--the first one of the lot to go. You used to snub me every time I tried to speak of marrying. You didn"t want to make up your mind!"
"No, honestly, I didn"t," she confessed. "I liked you a whole lot, Tony, but--I wasn"t quite sure--of either of us, you see, and----"
"You might have been sure of me! I couldn"t look at any woman except you."
"It wasn"t that sort of thing--exactly. People--cats!--used to put such horrid ideas into my head."
"What ideas?"
"I simply can"t tell you, Tony. Don"t ask me, please."
"Oh, well!" he flung out. "It doesn"t matter much now what ideas you had then. Do you love me to-day, Marise?"
"I--think I do--a little," she almost whispered, as her parent"s arm (twined round her waist) pressed painfully against her side.
"A little isn"t enough!" Severance said. "It must be a big love to stand the strain."
"The strain of what?" Mary, as a mother, intervened.
"Of the sacrifice I"m going to ask--to beg, to implore--her to make."
"Sacrifice? Do you mean anything about money?" Mrs. Sorel wanted to know. "You were quite right in calling me your friend. I can a.s.sure you it would be a joy to Marise if, in your trouble, her money----"
"The trouble"s worse than money."
"Tell us quickly," the girl bade him. "You said you couldn"t bear suspense. Neither can I bear it. We"re both fond of you, Tony--Mums and I. What hurts you, hurts us." And her tingling brain suddenly, inappropriately, gave her a picture of Garth, as he had stood tall and stiff against the door. He, too, had said, in vibrating tones, that he loved her. He had begged her to give him a chance; implored that she would let him try to be worthy. As if, poor fellow, he ever could come up to her standard! What girl of her breeding would think of him twice when there were blue-blooded, perfectly-groomed Greek G.o.ds like Tony Severance on earth? Mentally she whistled John Garth, V.C., down the wind to low-lying valleys peopled with girls like Miss Marks.
Tony was pale with the dusky pallor of olive complexions; his pleading eyes were like velvet with diamonds glittering through. She had never realised how he loved her--he, whom so many women worshipped. She felt that she loved him dearly, too. For the first time her heart was stirred warmly by his extraordinary good looks.
"You know all about my Uncle Constantine, my mother"s half-brother," he said, leaning on the mantelpiece and nervously lighting a cigarette (Mrs. Sorel and Marise permitted this; even smoked with him now and then). "Well, Uncle Con had very little use for me till by a fluke I got the t.i.tle. I never expected a penny of his money, though he was my mother"s guardian before she ran away with my father. He thought I was a rotter, and didn"t mind my knowing his opinion. He didn"t exactly forbid me his house in London, for he"d been fond of mother in his hard way, but he gave me no encouragement to come. His vacillation was because of my cousin OEnone. Did I ever speak of her to you?"
"You may have mentioned her," said Marise. "But, of course, we knew of her existence. There are always things in the papers about people with such incredible stacks of millions as the Ionides family have. She"s a "poor little rich girl," isn"t she? An invalid--something the matter with her spine?"
"She is an invalid," Severance answered. "But as years go, she isn"t a "little girl" any more. She"s close on twenty-two. I doubt if she"ll ever see twenty-three in this world."
"Pathetic!" sympathised Marise. "All that money couldn"t give her happiness!"
"She thinks," said Severance sullenly, "that only one thing can give her happiness--marrying me."
"Good gracious!" gasped Mrs. Sorel. Her blood flew to her head. Was he asking Marise to love him, only to break the news that she was to be jilted?
"OEnone has cared, since she was a tiny child," Severance stumbled gloomily on. "It really was pathetic, then. When she began to grow up (not much in size, poor girl, but in years, you know), Uncle Con would have shut the door on me if he hadn"t been afraid OEnone would die of grief. He thought me cad enough to cook up some plot, and contrive to marry the girl behind his back--for her millions. But when I got the earldom, a change came o"er the spirit of his dream.... He"s a born sn.o.b, is my half-Uncle Constantine! He always loved a t.i.tle, and hoped he could squeeze one for himself out of some British Government, but he"s never succeeded, so far. Instead of chasing me away with a stick, he invited me to come as often as possible. And just before you arranged to sail he made me a definite offer."
"You don"t mean----" Mary Sorel broke down in the midst of her sentence.
"I do. He said if I would marry OEnone, and "make his daughter a countess" (real old melodrama stuff!) he"d settle a million pounds on me, on our wedding-day. Also, I"d inherit OEnone"s private fortune.
Darling Marise, dear Mrs. Sorel, if you knew all the money troubles I"ve had, and have still, you"d forgive me if I told you this was a temptation."
"But you didn"t yield?" Mary prompted.
"No-o. Because Marise was sailing for the States, and I couldn"t let her come over here without me, to be gobbled up by some beastly American millionaire. I had to be with her. I had to!"
"That is real love," cried Mary. "I"m proud of you."
"I"m not proud of myself," he mumbled. "I got that bally mission. I persuaded Uncle Con to believe--at least I hope he more or less believed!--that it was thrust on me, instead of my doing all I knew to bag it. I told him I"d decide directly I returned to England--which would be soon. But it hasn"t been soon. He"s a man who gets inside information about official things. He knows the mission is finished, and I could go home any day I liked. Presently, if I"m not jolly careful, he"ll find out why I don"t like. Then my goose will be cooked.
Marise--Mrs. Sorel--I simply can"t afford to have that happen."
"What do you propose to do?" Mary challenged him, dry-lipped.
The black eyes blazed despair. "What can I do?"
"Tony," said Marise softly, "I"ve got "normous lots of money saved up; "most two hundred thousand dollars. You don"t need to grovel in the dust to any old Greek banker, if he is your uncle. So there!"
"My poor, sweet baby," groaned Severance. "What"s two hundred thousand dollars? Fifty thousand pounds, isn"t it? That"s pin money for you and your mother; and you go on making more while you stay on the stage, as a spider winds silvery thread out of itself. But for me it"s not nearly enough, as things are now. It wouldn"t save the situation. I"ve come into more than that amount with the estates. It"s a drop in the bucket, I find. The fellows behind me in the succession resigned themselves to poverty. I can"t, for the best of reasons. I"m in a beastly moneylender"s hands. I began by owing him ten thousand pounds. It"s more like eighty thousand to-day. Now, maybe, you see where we stand."
"No, I don"t see yet, where we are concerned," Mary objected. "You said you"d some suggestion--some proposal to make. But if Manse"s money isn"t enough to----"
"It isn"t, even if I could take it."
"And if you"re considering the idea of marrying your cousin----"
"I"ve got to marry her. That"s all there is to it. I"ve realised it since a heart-to-heart talk old Con forced me to have with him a fortnight before we sailed. I saw that some day this thing would have to happen."
"Then where--does Marise come in?" Mary suddenly bristled like a mother-porcupine.
For a moment Severance did not speak. It seemed that he could not. His gaze turned first to Marise, then to Mary. Could it be possible that those black eyes of his glittered with starting tears?
"I"m going to tell you," he said slowly, at last. "I want to tell you on my knees. It"s the only way a man could dare to say a thing like this to a girl like Marise--to a woman like you, Mrs. Sorel."
He did not wait for a word from either, but dropped to one knee, and threw his arms about both women as they clung nervously together. They could feel the throb of blood in his muscles. His face was no longer merely handsome; it was beautiful with a tragic, Greek beauty. The look in his eyes (Mary thought vaguely, as one thinks under a light dose of ether) would touch a heart of stone.
"I"ve got to marry OEnone," he repeated, "or come the worst cropper of any Severance for a century. If I"d never met you, Marise, I"d have done it without a qualm. OEnone"s a nice little thing--not the sort to keep a man in leading-strings because she holds the purse. I could have amused myself without much fear that she"d fuss--or tell tales to her father. But when a man loves a woman as I love you, it changes his outlook. I must see you. I must be with you. I can"t live away from you for long."
"I"m afraid you"ll have to when you"ve married Miss Ionides," Mary"s frozen voice warned him.
"Wait! Listen to my plan. I"ve only just thoroughly worked it out.
I----"
"Yet you told us a minute ago that you"d decided on this marriage before sailing."
"That"s true. But don"t be so hard on me. You promised to be kind judges. Put yourself in my place, if you can, Mrs. Sorel. My love for your girl is more than love. It"s a flame--a driving pa.s.sion. Can a man reason coldly when his blood, and his brain too, are on fire! I had to come with her to New York. I couldn"t look ahead further than that. I mean to make some plan, and G.o.d knows I"ve tried, day and night. I"ve thought of little else. But every idea I had was shut up inside what they call a "vicious circle." I could see no way out that Marise would accept--or you would let her accept. Then this last cable of old Con"s came to-day, while I was at Belloc"s. It is a kind of ultimatum. I know he means me to understand that. You can see it if you like--only let me go on now--as I"m started. It would be worse beginning again. He says he"s down with "flu, and OEnone is ill too, and he must see me to "settle the matter under discussion, or it may be too late." Those are his words. They"re a threat. By Jove, it was a douche, reading that in the midst of a jolly luncheon! I saw stars: but one of them has sent me a ray of light. I almost prayed to get its message. First time I"ve prayed since I was in the nursery! Yet here I am on my knees to you both, to tell you what the star said.
"Uncle Con may have "flu, and he may die, but he"s sure to tie everything up tight. I"m marked for slaughter. There"s no squirming out.
But poor OEnone can"t live long, even if she gets the toy she wants to play with--me. Her father doesn"t thoroughly realise that she"s doomed, but her doctors do. One of them is a friend of mine. He told me. She"s got some queer kind of incipient tuberculosis, and chronic anaemia.
Happiness--such as I can give her--will only be a flash in the pan. I"ll be more of a nurse than a husband. Well, I"m willing to go through all that, and do my honest best for her, while she lives. But if _I"m_ to live, I can"t be separated for a year--or at worst, let"s say two years--from the light of my life, the core of my heart. I must be able to meet Marise, to have her society, her friendship--by G.o.d, I swear I mean no evil! I must have something, I tell you, if I"m to get through that probation. Well, I see as clearly as you both see that we must have no scandal--for her sake--and for mine, too--and even for OEnone"s. I don"t want to distress the poor little thing! So here"s the plan that jumped into my brain ready made. Don"t cut me short--don"t tell me to stop before I"ve explained--before I"ve got to the end."