The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (best value ebook reader TXT) 📖

wish it--I----"

"I wish nothing with regard to either her or you," interrupts Tita, her breath coming a little quickly. "It is nothing to me. I do not care."

"Don't say that," says Rylton hoarsely. He is fighting his battle inch by inch. "Give me some hope! Is one sin to condemn a man for ever? I tell you all that is done. And you--if you love no one--give _me_ a chance!"

"Why should I trouble myself so far?" says she, with infinite disdain.

At this Rylton turns away from her. He goes to the window, and stands there gazing out, but seeing nothing.

"You are implacable--cold, heartless," says he, in a low tone, fraught with hidden meaning.

"Oh, let us leave _hearts_ out of the discussion," cries Tita scornfully. "And, indeed, why should we have any discussions? Why need we talk to each other at all? This interview"-- clenching her handkerchief into a ball--"what has it done for us? It has only made us both wretched!" She takes a step nearer to him. "Do--do promise me you will not seek another."

"I cannot promise you that."

"No?" She turns back again. "Well--go away now, at all events," says she, sighing.

"Not until I have said what is on my mind," says Rylton, with determination.

"Well, say it"--frowning.

"I will! You are my wife, and I am your husband, and I think it is your _duty_ to live with me."

She looks at him for a long time, as if thinking.

"I'll tell you what you think," says she slowly, "that it will add to your respectability in the eyes of your world to have your wife living in _your_ house, and not in Margaret's."

"I don't expect to be generously judged by you," says he. "But even as you put it there is sense in it. If our world----"

"Yours! yours!" interrupts she angrily--that old wound had always rankled. "It is not my world! I have nothing to do with it. I do not belong to it. Your mother showed me that, even so long ago as when we were first"--there is a little perceptible hesitation--"married".

_"Hang_ my mother!" says Rylton violently. "I tell you my world is your world, and if not--well, then I have no desire to belong to it. The question is, Tita, will you consent to forget--and--and forgive--and"--with a sudden plunge--"make it up with me?"

He would have taken her hand here, but she slips adroitly behind a small table.

"Say it is for respectability's sake, if you like, that I ask you to return to me," goes on Rylton, a little daunted, however, by her determined entrenchment; "though it is not. Still----"

She stops him.

"It is no use," says she. "Don't go on. I cannot. I _will_ not. I," her lips quiver slightly--"I was _too_ unhappy with you. And I should always think of----" Her voice dies away.

Rylton is thinking, too, of last night, and that terrible interview with Marian. A feeling of hatred towards her grows within him. She had played with him--killed all that was best in him, and then flung him aside. She had let him go for the moment--only to return and spoil whatever good the world had left him. Her face rises before him pleading, seductive; and here is the other face--angry, scornful. Oh, dear little angry face! How fair, how pure, and how beloved!

"I tell you," says he, breaking out vehemently, "that all that is at an end--if I ever loved her." He forgets everything now, and, catching her hands, holds them tightly in his own. "Give me another trial," entreats he.

"No, no!" She speaks as if choking, but for all that she draws her hands out of his. "It would be madness. You would tire. We should tire of each other in a week--where there is no love. No, no!"

"You refuse, then?"

"I refuse!"

"Tita----"

She turns upon him passionately.

"I _won't_ listen. It is useless. You"--a sob breaks from her--"why _don't_ you go!" she cries a little wildly.

"This is not good-bye," says he desperately. "You will let me come again? Margaret, I know, receives on Sundays. _Say_ I may come then."

"Yes."

She gives the permission faintly, and with evident reluctance. She lifts her eyes, and makes a gesture towards the door.

"Oh, I am going," says Rylton bitterly. He goes a step or two away from her, and then pauses as if loath to leave her.

"You might at least shake hands with me," says he.

She hesitates--then lays a cold little hand in his. He too hesitates, then, stooping, presses his lips warmly, lingeringly to it.

In another moment he is gone.

Tita stands motionless, listening to his departing footsteps. For a while she struggles with herself, as if determined to overcome the strange emotion that is threatening to master her. Then she gives way, and, flinging herself into an armchair, breaks into a passion of tears.

Margaret, coming presently into the room, sees her, and going to her, kneels down beside the chair and takes her into her arms.

"Oh, Margaret!" cries Tita. "Oh, Meg! Meg! And I was so rude to you! But to see him--to see him again----"

"My poor darling!" says Margaret, pressing the girl to her with infinite tenderness.


CHAPTER XXVI.

HOW SOME OLD FRIENDS REAPPEAR AGAIN; AND HOW SOME NEWS IS TOLD; AND HOW MAURICE MAKES ANOTHER EFFORT TO WIN HIS CASE.


"Just been to see her," says Mr. Gower, who has selected the snuggest chair in Margaret's drawing-room, and is now holding forth from its cushioned depths with a radiant smile upon his brow. "She's staying with the Tennants. They always had a hankering after Mrs. Bethune."

"Fancy Marian's being with _anyone_ when Tessie is in town!" says Margaret. "Captain Marryatt, that is a wretchedly uncomfortable chair. Come and sit here."

"Oh, thanks! I'm all right," says Marryatt, who would have died rather than give up his present seat. It has a full command of the door. It is plain, indeed, to all present that he is expecting someone, and that someone Mrs. Chichester--his mistaken, if honest, infatuation for that lean young woman being still as ardent as of yore.

Minnie Hescott, who is talking to Tita, conceals a smile behind her fan.

"What! haven't you heard about her and Marian?" asks Gower, leaning towards his hostess. "Why, you must be out of the swim altogether not to have heard that. There's a split there. A regular cucumber coldness! They don't speak now."

"An exaggeration, surely," says Margaret. "I saw lady Rylton yesterday and---- How d'ye do, colonel Neilson?"

There is the faintest blush on Margaret's cheek as she rises to receive her warrior.

"I hardly expected you to-day; I thought you were going down to Twickenham."

"What an awful story!" says Gower, letting her hear his whisper under pretence of picking up her handkerchief.

"Monday will do for that," says Neilson. "But Monday might not do for you. I decided not to risk the Sunday. By-the-bye, I have something to say to you, presently, if you can spare me a moment."

"Certainly," says Margaret, whereon the Colonel moves away to talk to someone else.

"Same old game, I suppose," suggests Gower, in a sweetly confidential tone, when he has gone. "Find it a little slow, don't you, knowing exactly what he's going to say to you, presently, when you have spared him a moment?"

"I really _don't_ know," says Margaret, bringing a dignified eye to bear upon him.

"No? Then you ought. It isn't that you haven't had opportunities enough. Time has not been denied you. But as you say you _don't_ know, I think it my duty to prepare you; to----"

"Really, Randal, I don't wish to know anything. I dare say Colonel Neilson is quite capable of----"

"He appears to me," severely, "to be thoroughly _in_-capable. He ought to have impressed it upon your brain in half the time he's taken to do it. It is quite a _little_ speech, and only firmness was required to make you remember it. This is it----"

"I don't wish to hear anything," says Margaret with suspicious haste.

"But _I_ wish you to hear it. I think it bad to have things sprung upon one unawares. Now listen. 'For the nine hundred and ninetieth time, my beloved Margaret, I implore you on my bended knees to make me a happy man!' You remember it now?"

"No, indeed; I never heard such an absurd speech in my life."

"That's the _second_ story you've told to-day," says Mr. Gower, regarding her with gentle sorrow.

"Oh, don't be stupid!" says Margaret. "Tell me what I _want_ to know; about Marian. I am sorry if there really has occurred a breach between her and my aunt."

"There is little doubt about that! What a born orator is a woman!" says Mr. Gower, with deep enthusiasm. "Not _one_ woman, mind you, but _every_ woman. What command of language is theirs! I assure you if Mr. Goldstone had heard Mrs. Bethune on the subject of the Dowager Lady Rylton to-day, he would have given her a place in the Cabinet upon the spot. She would carry all before her in the House of Commons; we should have Home Rule for Ireland in twenty-four hours."

"Perhaps she wouldn't have voted for it," says Margaret, laughing.

"You bet!" says Mr. Gower. "Any way, there's a row on between her and Lady Rylton. The hatchet that has been buried for so long is dug up again, and it is now war to the knife between them."

"But what is to become of Marian?" asks Margaret anxiously, whose kind heart bleeds for all sad souls.

"She's going to marry a Russian. A nobody--but lots of money. Best thing she could do, too," says Gower, speaking the last words hurriedly, as he sees the door open and Margaret rise to receive her new visitor.

The fresh arrival is Mrs. Chichester, exquisitely arrayed in a summery costume of apple-green. It suits her eyes, which are greener than ever to-day, and sparkling. Her whole air, indeed, is full of delightful vivacity. There is a _verve,_ a brightness, about her that communicates itself to her audience. She looks taller, thinner than usual.

"Such news!" cries she, in her clear, sharp voice. "Jack is coming home next month!"

"Jack?" questions Margaret.

"Yes, Jack. Jack Chichester--my husband, don't you know?"

At this a stricken silence falls upon her listeners. They all try to look as if they had been accustomed to think of Jack Chichester as an old and bosom friend. They also try (and this is even harder) _not_ to look at Marryatt. As for him, he has forgotten that there is anyone to look at him. His foolish, boyish eyes are fixed on Mrs. Chichester.

"Yes, really," goes on that somewhat flighty young person. "No wonder you are all surprised. He has been so long away that I expect you thought he wasn't anywhere. _I_ did almost. Well, he's coming now, any way, and that's a blessing. You'll all like him, I can tell you."

There is a ring of genuine feeling in her tone, not to be mistaken. She _is_ glad at the thought of her husband's return. Marryatt, recognising that ring, sinks into a chair with a groan. Oh, heavens! How he has pranced after that woman for fully twelve months, dancing attendance upon her, fulfilling her commands, and all the time her heart was filled with the