"Who is it?"
"Mrs. Ballantyne."
He noticed at once a change in Mrs. Repton. The frankness disappeared from her face; her eyes grew wary.
"I see," she said slowly. "I was wondering why I was placed next to you, for you are the lion of the evening and there are people here of more importance than myself. I knew it wasn"t for my _beaux yeux_."
She turned again to Thresk.
"So you know my Stella?"
"Yes. I knew her in England before she came out here and married. I have not, of course, seen her since. I want you to tell me about her."
Mrs. Repton looked him over with a careful scrutiny.
"Mrs. Carruthers has no doubt told you that she married very well."
"Yes; and that Ballantyne is a remarkable man," said Thresk.
Mrs. Repton nodded.
"Very well then?" she said, and her voice was a challenge.
"I am not contented," Thresk replied. Mrs. Repton turned her eyes to her plate and said demurely:
"There might be more than one reason for that."
Thresk abandoned all attempt to fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase "my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship.
Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds.
"I am going to give you the real reason, Mrs. Repton. I saw her photograph this afternoon on Mrs. Carruthers" piano, and it left me wondering whether happiness could set so much character in a woman"s face."
Mrs. Repton shrugged her shoulders.
"Some of us age quickly here."
"Age was not the new thing which I read in that photograph."
Mrs. Repton did not answer. Only her eyes sounded him. She seemed to be judging the stuff of which he was made.
"And if I doubted her happiness this afternoon I must doubt it still more now," he continued.
"Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Repton.
"Because of your reticence, Mrs. Repton," he answered. "For you have been reticent. You have been on guard. I like you for it," he added with a smile of genuine friendliness. "May I say that? But from the first moment when I mentioned Stella Ballantyne"s name you shouldered your musket."
Mrs. Repton neither denied nor accepted his statement. She kept looking at him and away from him as though she were still not sure of him, and at times she drew in her breath sharply, as though she had already taken upon herself some great responsibility and now regretted it. In the end she turned to him abruptly.
"I am puzzled," she cried. "I think it"s strange that since you are Stella"s friend I knew nothing of that friendship--nothing whatever."
Thresk shrugged his shoulders.
"It is years since we met, as I told you. She has new interests."
"They have not destroyed the old ones. We remember home things out here, all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole life in England, and here"s a definite part of it--perhaps a very important part--of which I am utterly ignorant. She has spoken of many friends to me; of you never. I am wondering why."
She spoke obviously without any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur!
The lines of a poem came into her thoughts.
"I know; the world proscribes not love, Allows my finger to caress Your lips" contour and downiness Provided it supplies the glove."
Suppose that here at her side was the man who would dispense with the glove! She looked again at Thresk. The lean strong face suggested that he might, if he wanted hard enough. All her life had been pa.s.sed in the support of authority and law. Authority--that was her husband"s profession. But just for this hour, as she thought of Stella Ballantyne, lawlessness shone out to her desirable as a star.
"No, she has never once mentioned your name, Mr. Thresk."
Again Thresk was conscious of the little pulse of resentment beating at his heart.
"She has no doubt forgotten me."
Mrs. Repton shook her head.
"That"s one explanation. There might be another."
"What is it?"
"That she remembers you too much."
Mrs. Repton was a little startled by her own audacity, but it provoked nothing but an incredulous laugh from her companion.
"I am afraid that"s not very likely," he said. There was no hint of elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she knew, to get any light.
"If you take the man you know best of all," she used to say, "you still know nothing at all of what he"s like when he"s alone with a woman, especially if it"s a woman for whom he cares--unless the woman talks."
Very often the woman does talk and the most intimate and private facts come in a little while to be shouted from the housetops. But Stella Ballantyne did not talk. She had talked once, and once only, under a great stress to Jane Repton; but even then Thresk had nothing to do with her story at all.
Thresk turned quickly towards her.
"In a moment Mrs. Carruthers will get up. Her eyes are collecting the women and the women are collecting their shoes. What have you to tell me?"
Mrs. Repton wanted to speak. Thresk gave her confidence. He seemed to be a man without many illusions, he was no romantic sentimentalist. She went back to the poem of which the lines had been chasing one another through her head all through this dinner, as a sort of accompaniment to their conversation. Had he found it out? she asked herself--
"The world and what it fears."
Thus she hung hesitating while Mrs. Carruthers gathered in her hands her gloves and her fan. There was a woman at the other end of the table however who would not stop talking. She was in the midst of some story and heeded not the signals of her hostess. Jane Repton wished she would go on talking for the rest of the evening, and recognised that the wish was a waste of time and grew flurried. She had to make up her mind to say something which should be true or to lie. Yet she was too staunch to betray the confidence of her friend unless the betrayal meant her friend"s salvation. But just as the woman at the end of the table ceased to talk an inspiration came to her. She would say nothing to Thresk, but if he had eyes to see she would place him where the view was good.
"I have this to say," she answered in a low quick voice. "Go yourself to Chitipur. You sail on Friday, I think? And to-day is Monday. You can make the journey there and back quite easily in the time."
"I can?" asked Thresk.