CHAPTER XXXIX.
CAFFYN SPRINGS HIS MINE.
'I SHOULD like your opinion about those hangings in the Gold Room,' Caffyn had said to Mabel, for the benefit of any bystanders, as soon as he reached her chair: 'they seem to me the very thing for the boudoir scene in the third act. You promised to help me; would it bore you very much to come now?'
Tired as she was, Mabel made no demur. She knew, of course, that he wished to speak to her alone, and she had something to say to him herself, which could not be said too soon. He led her through the room in question—a luxurious little nest, at an angle of the house, entered by separate doors from the music-room and the head of the principal staircase; but he did not think it necessary to waste any time upon the hangings, and they passed out through one of the two windows upon the balcony, which had been covered in with striped canvas for the season.
He drew forward a seat for her and took one himself, but did not speak for some time. He was apparently waiting for her to begin. A tête-à-tête with a man to whom one has just forbidden one's house is necessarily a delicate matter, and, although Mabel did not falter at all in her purpose, she did feel a certain nervousness which made her unwilling to speak at first.
'As you leave me to begin,' he said, 'let me ask you if what your husband has told me just now is true—that you have closed your own door to me, and mean to induce Mrs. Langton to do the same?'
'It is true,' she replied in a low voice; 'you left me no other course.'
'You know what the result of that will be, I suppose?' he continued. 'Mrs. Featherstone will soon find out that two such intimate friends of hers will have nothing to do with me, and she will naturally want to know the reason. What shall you tell her?'
'That is what I meant to say to you!' she answered. 'I thought I ought in fairness to tell you—that you might, perhaps, take it as a warning. If I am asked, though I hope I shall not be, I shall feel bound to say what I know.'