"But you——? It is clearing a little, isn't it?" with a despairing glance out of the window. "If you could manage to get back and tell them that——"
She is made thoroughly ashamed of her selfishness a moment later.
"But my dear girl, consider! Why should I tempt a severe attack of inflammation of the lungs by driving ten or twelve miles through this unrelenting torrent? We are very well out of it here. This Mrs.—er—Connor—Connolly seems a very respectable person, and is known to you. I shall tell her to make you as comfortable as her 'limited liabilities,'" with quite a laugh at his own wit, "will allow."
"Pray tell her nothing. Do not give yourself so much trouble," says Joyce calmly. "She will do the best she can for me without the intervention of any one."
"As you will, au revoir!" says he, waving her a graceful farewell for the moment.
He is not entirely happy in his mind, as he crosses the tiny hall and makes his way first to the bar and afterward to the open doorway. Like a cat, he hates rain! To drive back through this turmoil of wind and wet for twelve long miles to the Court is more than his pleasure-loving nature can bear to look upon. Yet to remain has its drawbacks, too.
If Miss Maliphant, for example, were to hear of this escapade there might be trouble there. He has not as yet finally made up his mind to give inclination the go by and surrender himself to sordid considerations, but there can be no doubt that the sordid things of this life have, with some natures, a charm hardly to be rivaled successfully by mere beauty.
The heiress is attractive in one sense; Joyce equally so in another. Miss Maliphant's charms are golden—are not Joyce's more golden still? And yet, to give up Miss Maliphant—to break with her finally—to throw away deliberately a good £10,000 a year!
He lights his cigar with an untrembling hand, and, having found it satisfactory, permits his mind to continue its investigations.
Ten thousand pounds a year! A great help to a man; yet he is glad at this moment that he is free to accept or reject it. Nothing definite has been said to the heiress—nothing definite to Joyce either. It strikes him at this moment, as he stands in the dingy doorway of the inn and stares out at the descending rain, that he has shown distinct cleverness in the way in which he has manoeuvred these two girls, without either of them feeling the least suspicion of the other. Last night Joyce had been on the point of a discovery, but he had smoothed away all that. Evidently he was born to be a successful diplomatist, and if that appointment he has been looking for ever comes his way, he will be able to show the world a thing or two.