A younger and more pessimistically disposed man than I might conceivably have been plunged into the depths of despair at being thus told by the woman he loved that she hated him. But, on the whole, I was not inclined to be altogether dissatisfied with the interview. Never before—even though her words were sympathetic and her manner not unkindly—had she failed to make me realise that I was kept at a distance; that I was an unvouched-for stranger, between whom and her the barriers of custom and convention still necessarily existed. But her words and her acts of to-day—so it seemed to me—were a tacit admission that the barrier had been removed. She had concerned herself sufficiently in my career to express a wish in regard to it (though here I fear she acted on her aunt's instigation rather than from any impulse or inclination of her own); she had made the granting of that wish a favour to herself, and had even suffered me to declare my love unreproved. Her tears had, I admit, at the moment utterly dismayed me; but remembering the subsequent by-play of the uneclipsed eye, I was now disposed to think either that those tears were caused by pique at the fact that I had not more promptly acceded to her request, or that they were no more than the legitimate use of a woman's natural weapon for the confounding and undoing of man. Possibly, too—so I tried to persuade myself—the exclamation "I hate you—I hate you!" was less an expression of personal dislike than a pretty woman's very pardonable exhibition of captiousness at finding herself thwarted where she had expected immediate submission and consent. With the assistance of Miss Clara, I hoped soon to regain whatever ground I had lost in her niece's favour, and as, after leaving us, the older lady had made straight for the garden, and had (as I could see from the window) been pacing it bareheaded, hands clasped behind her and deep in thought, I ventured to lift the window, and to ask her to spare me a moment before I went.
She came in at once, looking, I thought, a trifle tired and pale, but otherwise all trace of agitation was gone, and she spoke with all her usual self-possession.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, coming to the point as usual, the instant the door was closed; "what have you and Clara been talking about?"
"My work," I answered laconically. "I'm to throw up crime investigation, and devote myself to something else."
"And you have promised?"
"Well, no, I haven't. I had the temerity to ask for some reason why I should be called upon to take so extraordinary a course, with the result that your niece first burst into tears, and then flung out of the room in a passion. Do you know why?"
She did not condescend to answer.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, "give up this detective work at once. Devote all your time to book-writing, and I'll stand your friend. Refuse, and you do not enter the house or see Clara again."
"The devil is in it!" I exclaimed rudely and with exasperation. "I'll do anything to please you, who have proved yourself so true and so generous a friend. But surely I'm entitled to a reason. I admit frankly that I'm less keen on this work than I was before I heard the Dumpling's passionate plea for the poor—a plea which seemed to me a sort of conscription, calling upon and compelling every able-bodied man to enlist himself and to take up arms in so sacred a cause. I don't say that I mightn't see my way, sooner or later, perhaps even at once, to give up the detective business, if giving it up means pleasing you and winning your niece—who, by the bye, has just done me the honour to declare that she hates me, so there seems small enough occasion to consider that aspect of the case. But when a man has devoted years of his life to any particular career, and has even made some small success at it, you can hardly expect him to throw up everything at a moment's notice, and without any sort of reason being given for the request. What is your reason? What is your niece's reason? For some reason the two of you must surely have."
"It isn't respectable, for one thing," replied Aunt Clara doggedly.