Which of them was right at that moment he could not have told. He was only conscious that she was necessary to him, that she filled an empty place in his heart, strengthening his hand by the touch of hers. He saw her as a kindred spirit upon whom he could rely, a fountain of that sympathy of which he had been so stubbornly deprived, the dearest part of the new life he had been called upon to lead; and he could not let her go. He tightened his clasp on her hands and drew her nearer.
“You’ve been thinking things, all sorts of absurd and unkind things, and my mother’s been thinking other things for you; but now you’ve got to think with me and listen to me! I want you for my wife, Deb, and it doesn’t matter a jot why you marry me as long as you do marry me, so tell me I still have your promise, and trust me to bring my mother round, after a while.”
“It doesn’t matter?” Deb looked at him intently, sadly, yet with a touch of mischief in spite of her aching heart. “It doesn’t really matter if I marry you for a daily drive behind liveries, rather than for the sake of belonging to you and being your wife?—not because I want to be with you always, and because of the way you smile and speak, and bring the sunshine with you wherever I happen to be, but because it is a fine thing to be mistress of Crump, and to have the first place at dinner parties, and all the County kowtowing to me, hat in hand? It doesn’t really matter?”
His face fell boyishly, and she drew a sharp breath of mixed relief and pain, for if he had loved her he would have known how hopelessly she had betrayed herself in that last speech. He would have caught her in his arms and crushed her foolish argument into silence; not have stood looking down at her doubtfully, as Christian was doing, half-smiling and half abashed.
“But you do like to be with me, don’t you?” he asked anxiously; and she just answered, “Oh, Christian!” rather hysterically, trying to free her hands, and after a moment’s struggle he let them go.
“I don’t believe that you only care for the flesh-pots,” he said, his face very troubled. “You always make out that you do, but anybody who knows you as well as I do can see that you’re not really like that. It’s only natural, of course, that the place should appeal to you. You’re not a Lyndesay for nothing. But you’re too fine a nature to marry a man for whom you had no feeling whatever. If you care for me only a little, Deb, we’ll get along all right and make life a success. Others have done it who didn’t start with half as good a friendship as ours. Tell me it’s not just the place and nothing else, and I’ll keep you in spite of everybody, in spite of my mother, in spite of yourself. Tell me you care a little!”
“As I cared for Stanley!” she answered steadily, making a last effort; and as the portrait flashed back upon their consciousness, it seemed to both that Slinker himself was in very truth standing there between them.
CHAPTER XX
Callander was in the hall when they went down, and he took Deborah home. He wondered a little at the ceremoniousness with which Christian took leave of them at the door, but he was often puzzled by the mixture of boyishness and dignity in the young man, and thought no more of it. As for Deb, she was too busy holding to her hat in the teeth of the now flying gale to yield any satisfactory psychological impression. He had long since realised the affinity between the two, but exactly where they stood he could not guess.
As they left the park by the lower lodge, the Whyterigg car turned in at the gates, and roared past them in the fading light.