“I loathed you,” she remarked, refusing to be drawn. “You were the most objectionable, bad-tempered, conceited little beast that ever wore a silly little top hat and Eton suit.”
He laughed with a relish.
“That’s better!” approvingly. “It’s impossible not to think there is something the matter with you, when you are not dealing out bombs of some sort. Why were you looking so woebegone when I came from the study, out here all alone in the hall?”
“I was not looking woebegone.”
“Oh, yes, you were—just as if I shouldn’t know.” There was a pause, then he said with unexpected gentleness: “You were thinking about Eileen and O’Hara getting engaged, and you being left out in the cold.” He put his hand on hers suddenly: “Mavourneen,” he said in a voice of enthralling softness, “you were lonesome.”
For one moment she left her hand in his, and then sprang to her feet with a bound: “An objectionable, bad-tempered, conceited little beast, that’s what you were,” and she slipped past him back to the drawing-room.
Lawrence remained a few seconds longer, and in his face was a strange mingling of yearning and satisfaction. That one moment had been passing sweet, the very most he had had to encourage him all through—yet how it made him hunger for more! And she had looked sad when he found her, he had seen it distinctly—the little droop about the lips—the little air of unwonted thoughtfulness.
Ah! she must come now—there must be no more delay—surely with Eileen’s engagement a recognised fact he could make headway at last. Surely this was the moment to strike hard. He would take his opportunity.
There were again tears on Paddy’s lashes that night, and she tossed restlessly. She shut her eyes, and shut her ears, and tried to shut her mind—but nothing would wholly drown those few words, coming as they did in her first hours of loneliness—nor the ravishing sweetness of the tones: “Mavourneen, you were lonesome.”
It was like a spell upon her. Some unreal enchantment that possessed her spirit. Of course it must be broken. Things could not go as they were. Once for all she must make him see the uselessness of his quest, and it must be soon. That Eileen was healed and comforted did not make the smallest difference. The past was still the past. The handwriting still glowed on the wall. Over his coveted happiness—over any happiness for them together—was writ large the sentence of old: “Tekel—Found Wanting.”