Then he pushed away both book and weapon, and, resting his elbows on the table, contemplated his vis-à-vis with a grey, drawn, haggard face—a face expressing such anxiety and desperation, that it was difficult to believe that it was the countenance of good-looking, popular, débonnaire Captain Waring.
“I don’t want to drive you to anything,” said Mark, who was also deadly pale; “but if I keep my lips sealed and continue to feel a mean, double-faced hound, I must have my stipulation also. It is not for the sake of any extra consideration or popularity I might gain that I wish to speak—you believe that? But you know I am deliberately playing a double part, and sailing under false colours. It all seemed so easy and harmless at first, from sending off the valet and baggage and——”
“All that sort of thing, as Sir Gloster would say,” interrupted Clarence, with a ribald laugh.
“But now it has grown from small beginnings, it leads on from one deception to another. I am almost afraid to open my mouth; I never dare to allude to hunting or yachting, or anything that sounds like money, or even to speak of my uncle or my home, for fear people may think that I am lying.”
“You never wanted to make these confidences when you were in Columbo or Calcutta,” sneered Clarence. “You have been exciting some one’s interest, eh? And pray, what is your stipulation?”
“That I may tell the whole truth to one person.”
“As a dead, dead secret. I don’t mind if you do—as long as it is not a woman.”
“But it is a woman,” said Jervis, quickly.
“Ah, I need not ask her name—Miss Gordon,” exclaimed Waring, with a peculiar grating emphasis. “Now, there’s a girl I don’t like—nasty, snubby way with her, and the most haughty smile I ever beheld.”
“Her ways and her smiles are not likely to concern you much, I fancy; but she is the girl I wish to marry, if I can prevail upon her to accept me.”