“Was that Frederick Huffe?” she whispered at last. “That nice man who went away and never came back for the dance I had promised him?”
“My God! didn’t you know?” exclaimed Dalkeith. “I am sorry.”
After he had gone she sat there a long time, very white and still. She was remembering acutely the lines of that pleasant, charming face, the satirical yet boyish blue eye behind the eye-glass, his gay and witty remarks, his zest for dancing. Yet all the while he was weary of life! Death was at his elbow!
While she sat there meditating on the strangeness of men, and on the masks they year, concealing their true selves from the world, she saw an attendant approach the table where Mrs Cork was playing cards and hand her a telegram.
On reading it, Mrs Cork put down her cards and asked to be excused from the game. The words: “Bad News” were spoken in a calm voice, but as she passed, Loree saw that her face was of a deadly pallor, haggard and wintry, with sombre eyes. No more was seen of her that day or the next. The maids reported that her news seemed bad indeed and that she was prostrate, but no details transpired.
Loree longed miserably to go and condole, but dared not intrude upon one so bitterly offended with her. The next best thing seemed to be to try and explain and to ask for forgiveness. She spent the whole of an afternoon composing a penitent letter.
Dear Mrs Cork:—
I am so deeply sorry that you are offended with me. Please do not be. It was an impertinence on my part to put that note in your room, and I beg your pardon. But I did not do it out of any feeling except of pure friendliness and liking for you. Also, I had a reason for supposing that you were in need of money, and I thought it would be a nice way of spending the fifty pounds my husband had sent me for a birthday present by giving another woman a helping hand, just as I hope a woman would help me if ever I were in trouble.
Yours sincerely, Loraine Loree Temple.
She gave it to the maid for delivery and went down to dinner, though without the light heart a decent action should have ensured.
The fact that she had known the man who shot himself—danced, laughed, talked with him within half an hour of his desperate exit from the world obsessed her poignantly. She longed for something or some one to distract her from the sad memory, and with what relief did she find that Heseltine Quelch had returned, reappearing from nowhere as suddenly as he had gone. As she came down the stairs he, too, faultlessly groomed and debonair, crossed the hall. He was taking a pile of letters and telegrams from the hands of his man, but at sight of Loree he handed them back with the brief comment: “Put them in my room. I’ll go through them later,” and came straight to her, as the bee to the honey-flower. As for her, after two dull, lonely days, the fire was lit once more, and the warmed herself and smiled in the glow of it. A certain recklessness entered into her, and she let his eyes enfold and caress her without the rebuke a woman knows so well how to introduce into her manner. After all, she said to herself, if he was so determined to hurt himself, why should she worry for him? People who go looking for scalps must expect scars. If she felt herself in danger, she could draw back and escape, as she had done that other night. What could he do but acquiesce? She was not in his power in any way. She had never given him encouragement to make a fool of himself. If he now mistook her very natural pleasure at having boredom relieved for any warmer feeling on her part, well—tant pis for him! His blood was on his own head, and hers not the fault.
Thus she reasoned, justifying herself for once more plunging into the fascinating game, walking on the wild precipice, fluttering near the live wire on which some women might meet disaster but to which she intended to remain invulnerable. The cruelty which so often comes with consciousness of power stirred her. She knew now that, though she felt the charm of Quelch, it would give her pleasure to punish him through his passion for her. If she had seen that cold and resolute look on his face two evenings before, when he watched her tripping upstairs, she might not have been so sure of her power to punish.