He spoke as one suffering under an unjust accusation. It was bad luck, and he wondered vaguely why Dahlia had been so interested; why should she care, unless, and the idea struck him with horror, she already regarded him as a prospective father-in-law?
Dinner was announced by the grimy little maid. Robin took the dark figure of Mrs. Feverel on his arm and made some hesitating remark about the weather—but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased. The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall, had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy, mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her, seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by his own thrice-cursed folly.
The dinner was not a success. The food was bad, but that Robin had expected. As he faced the depression of it, he was more than ever determined to end it, conclusively, that evening, but Mrs. Feverel's gloom and Dahlia's little attempts at coquettish gaiety frightened him. The conversation, supported mainly by Dahlia, fell into terrible lapses, and the attempts to start it again had the unhappy air of desperate remedies doomed to failure. Dahlia's pathetic glances failed of their intent. Robin was too deeply engaged in his own gloomy reflections to notice them, but her eyes filled with tears, and at last her efforts ceased and a horrible, gloomy silence fell like a choking fog upon them.
"Will you smoke, Robin?" she said, when at last the dessert, in the shape of some melancholy oranges and one very attenuated banana, was on the table. "Egyptian or Turkish—or will you have a pipe?"
He took a cigarette clumsily from the box and his fingers trembled as he lit first hers and then his own—he was so terribly afraid of cutting a ridiculous figure. He sat down again and beat a tattoo on the tablecloth. Mrs. Feverel, with some grimly muttered excuse, left the room. She watched him a moment from the other side of the table and then she came over to him. She bent over his chair, leaning her hands on his shoulders.
"Robin, what is it?" she said. "What's happened?"
"Nothing," he said gloomily. "It's all right——"
"Oh! do you suppose I haven't seen?" She bent closer to him and pressed her cheek against his. "Robin, old boy—you're not getting tired of me? You're tired or cross to-night—I don't know. I've been very patient all this time—waiting for you—hoping that you would come—longing for you—and you never came—all these many weeks. Then I thought that, perhaps, you were too busy or were afraid of people talking—but, at last, there was to be to-night; and I've looked forward to it—oh! so much!—and now you're like this!"
She was nearly crying, and there was that miserable little catch in her voice. He did feel an awful cad—he hadn't thought that she would really care so much as this; but still it had to be done some time, and this seemed a very good opportunity.
He cleared his throat, and, beating the carpet with his foot, tried to speak with dignity as well as feeling—but he only succeeded in being patronising.