“And so,” Aimée went on, “when Aunt Alice heard that you had been there she knew, of course, what it meant, and she insisted on hearing everything. Then she said the truth must be told; that Mr. Meredith must know why I went out last night; that now I am rich—why are things so much more important when people happen to be rich?—it would not do for any one to imagine that I had been going to elope. But Fanny said that Mr. Meredith would never forgive her if he heard the truth now, and I begged Aunt Alice on my knees to let me do this little thing in return for all she has done for me. So at last she yielded, and I was very glad, and—and it can not be that you will go to her and make more trouble. Why should you concern yourself about me?” she demanded, turning to him with another but somewhat lesser flash in her eyes. “What is it to you if I do this?”
“Well, for one thing,” replied Kyrle, “I am myself somewhat concerned in it, for I assure you that I am not the kind of man to endeavor to persuade a girl of your age to elope, and naturally the imputation of having done so is not very agreeable to me.”
“Oh!” said Aimée, with a look of contrition, “I never thought of that. I forgot that it could not be pleasant for you to be suspected of such a thing. You must forgive me for being so selfish; and yet”—she paused an instant and gazed at him with a passion of entreaty in her eyes, which at that moment he thought were at once the most expressive and the most beautiful he had ever seen—“and yet,” she went on in a low, thrilling tone, “if you could only be generous and kind enough to allow it to be believed of you by the only person who knows anything about it, I, for one, should be grateful to you as long as I live!”
But for the gravity of her appeal Kyrle could have laughed at the absurdity of the situation; and yet her simplicity, her utter lack of thought for herself, touched him again beyond measure. “My dear child,” he said—for in truth he did not recall her name—“I feel as if I might do almost anything, simply because you wished it; but you do not know what you ask in this matter. You tell me that you have become rich, which means important in the world, and yet you desire to darken the fair promise of your youth with such a story as this would speedily become in the mouth of gossip. It is impossible—it would be a shame! I can not consent to it.”
“But what can you do?” she asked, dropping appeal and regarding him now with nothing less than defiance in her dark eyes. “Is it not true that a gentleman is bound never to betray a woman’s secret? How, then, can you betray Fanny’s? As for me, I will never speak.”
There was no doubt of that. A hundred oaths could not have expressed resolution more firmly, more immovably, than those simple words. And what could Kyrle reply? He knew well that he could not betray Miss Berrien’s secret, and it was the consciousness of this that had made him so determined to influence Aimée. But now he was forced to own himself completely baffled. Aimée’s strength of will was greater than any force he could bring to bear against it, and there was nothing left but to accept the situation created for him as best he might.
“You are right,” he said at last. “A gentleman is bound in honor to keep a woman’s secret; so Miss Berrien is safe from me. If she chooses to shelter herself behind you, and you choose to allow her to do so, I have no power to prevent it. But I am sorry that I have failed completely to make you understand what a great mistake you are committing. To save an unprincipled flirt from the consequences of her double-dealing, you are laying a cloud on your own life at its beginning.”
“I care nothing about that,” said the girl, with honest indifference. “I am only sorry that Mr. Meredith should be deceived, and that you have to bear (though only in his opinion) that imputation of which you spoke a few minutes ago. But I am going away to-morrow; and since it seems I am of some importance now” (a sigh), “I suppose the Joscelyns will keep me always; so he and everybody else will soon forget all about this.”
“I assure you that I shall never forget it,” said Kyrle. “It is an episode calculated to remain in a man’s memory. The heartless, selfish woman who has made a fool of me, I shall indeed have no trouble in forgetting; but the part you have played, mistaken as it is, I shall long remember. I only wish you had displayed such qualities as you have proved yourself to possess, in a better cause. Given a good cause, you would be a heroine. And now”—he rose as he spoke—“this time it is good-by. Since I have failed completely in the end for which I remained here, I shall return at once to the yacht. Will you shake hands with me and tell me your name? One should surely know as much as that of a young lady with whom he is supposed to have nearly eloped.”
But Aimée could not jest on such a subject. She gravely told him her name and put out her hand. For long he carried with him a picture of the slender presence, the delicate face looking wistfully into his, as if to make sure that this time he could be relied upon to depart, and the golden sunset glory seen through the orange boughs behind her.