“And Mr. Vyse?” said Lucy, who kept commendably calm. “Does he not matter? That I love Cecil and shall be his wife shortly? A detail of no importance, I suppose?”
But he stretched his arms over the table towards her.
“May I ask what you intend to gain by this exhibition?”
He said: “It is our last chance. I shall do all that I can.” And as if he had done all else, he turned to Miss Bartlett, who sat like some portent against the skies of the evening. “You wouldn’t stop us this second time if you understood,” he said. “I have been into the dark, and I am going back into it, unless you will try to understand.”
Her long, narrow head drove backwards and forwards, as though demolishing some invisible obstacle. She did not answer.
“It is being young,” he said quietly, picking up his racquet from the floor and preparing to go. “It is being certain that Lucy cares for me really. It is that love and youth matter intellectually.”
In silence the two women watched him. His last remark, they knew, was nonsense, but was he going after it or not? Would not he, the cad, the charlatan, attempt a more dramatic finish? No. He was apparently content. He left them, carefully closing the front door; and when they looked through the hall window, they saw him go up the drive and begin to climb the slopes of withered fern behind the house. Their tongues were loosed, and they burst into stealthy rejoicings.
“Oh, Lucia—come back here—oh, what an awful man!”
Lucy had no reaction—at least, not yet. “Well, he amuses me,” she said. “Either I’m mad, or else he is, and I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. One more fuss through with you, Charlotte. Many thanks. I think, though, that this is the last. My admirer will hardly trouble me again.”
And Miss Bartlett, too, essayed the roguish: