Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked to a neighbouring window. Pushing back the half-closed shutters he saw before him a wide expanse of the Manoir gardens; through an arch of cedar boughs he caught a goodly vista of fields and orchards beyond. And all that he looked upon would one day be Marjorie’s! With crushing force came the conviction that he had fallen into a desperate error, had walked blindfolded, a second time, into a Fool’s Paradise. Marjorie Bartrand’s youth, the intimacy into which they had been thrown, his own absolute want of premeditation might be excused. The facts were there, looking, as disagreeable facts have a knack of doing, with transparent clearness in his face. He had walked into a Fool’s Paradise. To accept the position, give Marjorie Bartrand back her freedom, unconditionally, were the moment’s immediate and exceeding bitter duties. The wilful hot-headed child of seventeen—conquered at one moment, at the next resisting—repented her, already, of her bargain. Let that bargain be cancelled.
‘Your life shall never become miserable through fault of mine, Miss Bartrand.’ Turning round, Geff looked at her gravely. ‘Pardon me whatever foolish words I spoke this morning. In a week or two forget my existence! You are bound to me by no promise——’
‘And it costs you nothing to give me up? You can talk of forgetting in this airy fashion?’ interrupted Marjorie, with vehement recollection of her own surrender. ‘Then you never sought me from liking. I have had a second experience of the same cruel story. The acres of Tintajeux, few though they be, are matters, it seems, better worth caring for than Marjorie Bartrand, herself.’
From her cradle to her grave it would be safe to aver that speech so ignoble never issued from Marjorie Bartrand’s lips. She recognised its meanness before the last word was spoken. Her cheeks crimsoned. She could have flung herself at the feet of the lover her suspicion had dishonoured.
‘I was wrong ... forgive me for speaking like this,’ she began to stammer brokenly.
But Geoffrey Arbuthnot could not condone a paltry accusation, even from her. With two strides he reached the girl’s chair. He stood before her, pale and strongly moved. She hardly recognised the expression of his face.
‘And so you think that I, with the full use of my muscles and brain, sought to marry you for money’s sake, the poor little handful of money that goes with Tintajeux Manoir. The slight to my intelligence is severe. Had I been a fortune-hunter, Miss Bartrand, I should have struck for a larger stake.’
‘Then why did you look at me? Why did you not let me go my way?’ She clasped her hands together, piteously. ‘For you have never loved me. You confessed as much just now?’
‘Did I? I can only remember a confession in which I spoke the truth—a confession you believed this morning,’ added Geoffrey, with as much steadiness as he could muster.
‘All this is waste of time,’ she said, with a miserable little laugh. ‘We have the habit of plain speaking—you and I. Let us keep it up to the last. Your heart is not your own, Mr. Arbuthnot. You have liked some other person better than you like me. Have liked, did I say? You like her, I doubt not, to this day.’