Chapter Twenty Eight.

A Note of Interrogation instead of a Full-Stop.

The Milborough marriage was the event of the winter. It was generally conceded that Miss Dalrymple was rewarded for those contrarieties in former love affairs which the world now forgave, but kept stored up for future use—or chastisement. Meanwhile it was at her feet as the most beautiful of brides, and the splendour of her lot made Lady Fanny’s choice the more amazing. Lord Milborough’s consent flew out readily enough when he was in the rush of his own triumph, and might have found wife and sister difficult to harmonise. Since his marriage, and since he finds Lady Fanny quite content to pass her days with her aunt, Mrs Harcourt, or the Ravenhills, he is disposed to grumble at her engagement to a curate. Anne takes her part.

“If she knows her own mind, for pity’s sake let her go after it,” she said once.

As to that wedding, one may prophesy.

But as to other possibilities, on which the last chapter is expected to pronounce, I can only express ignorance. All that this story professes to do is to take a few months out of the lives of certain men and women, and, very imperfectly, show what the months did for them. Now comes the future, as to which I know no more than you do. What do you think? Will Wareham, as the past recedes, read in it confirmation of Anne’s verdict on herself—a heartless woman? If he does, will it affect his own heart? This is certain, that the first effect on him of hearing of her engagement was stupefaction. And Anne contrived, perhaps in good faith, to let him feel that she considered him to have behaved very ill. Possibly—but guesses are like the rootless flowers with which children deck their gardens, by to-morrow they may be worthless; and I am sorry, for I should like to group them as I want my flowers to grow, and Millie Ravenhill would make any garden fair.

What Wareham thinks he will do is to fling himself heart and mind into his profession. Certain, rash man, that he now knows a great deal about women, his new book deals chiefly with their characteristics. Cynicism is unwholesome in the body, and one may pardon its victim for spitting it out; since, thus got rid of, it often leaves the patient open to sweeter influences. One thing is certain, that whether his love for Anne is dead or not, his respect is gone, and that when he read the account of the great wedding in the Morning Post, he broke into laughter to think how clever a fooling hers had been.

A week ago, Colonel Martyn overtook him in Piccadilly.

“I’ve just left Blanche in Grosvenor Square—Lady Milborough’s, you know. By Jove, that young woman has done well for herself!”

“She was made for her position,” Wareham remarked.

“She climbed for it, you should rather say. She was a rare flirt.”

“Stop,” said Wareham suddenly. He was not the man to belittle the woman he had once loved.

The End.