Such a failure was illogical, but human weakness is generally that. She knew perfectly well that whatever happened this man could never be hers. He was altogether beyond and above her and her circumstances. It would make no difference really if he learned the truth from her lips to-night, or if he learned it a few days hence by the logic of events.
She saw her duty now a dead sure thing. But she had not the power of will to do it, not to-night at least. She heard the odd change in his voice as her silence began to hurt him; even if she could not actually see the eyes of anxiety and bewilderment with which he looked at her, she knew what his feelings were.
For himself he was puzzled, baffled, disconcerted. He was sure that Lady Elfreda liked him. Her shyness, her blushes, her charming hesitations told him that. What was it then that held her back? Why could she not give a straightforward answer to a plain question? There could be but one explanation. It was one he was loth to accept, yet being the kind of man he was, he knew how to do so.
“You don’t think I’m good enough.” The pressure of a decidedly masculine hand tightened upon her fingers. “Well, my dear, I don’t blame you. I am what I am.” He sighed heavily. “And you are what you are. All the same, I think I could have made you happy.”
Quick tears sprang to Girlie’s eyes. The problem for her now was not to let him see them. But this, alas, was beyond her present resources. Her tears were not to be concealed. Lord Duckingfield permitted himself a whimsical sigh. She was a little fool. And at that moment it called for a good deal of self-control not to tell her so.
XXVII
In the schoolroom at The Laurels that evening, Miss Cass was condemned to a lonely and unappetizing meal. Banished in disgrace from the dinner table, debarred the drawing room and its social joys, “sent to Coventry” because of her own wickedness, she had only hard thoughts and the meager fare of war upon which to subsist.
To-night meat had given out at The Laurels, as it so often did in the present time of famine, and Miss Cass had to be content with overboiled codfish and an insipid sauce, followed by tapioca pudding. Elfreda’s general dislike of her surroundings had not been made less when she had found tapioca pudding to be a standing dish in The Laurels nursery, just as under the régime of Pikey at Castle Carabbas it had enjoyed similar preëminence. Moreover, it was of the true consistency, thick, slabby and odious, in every way a worthy rival of that which Elfreda and her sisters had fondly believed to be without a peer in any human household.
Poetic justice, of course. It served her right. She was paid out finely. Anyhow, a plateful of this delicacy gave one a sense of having eaten it, which was more than could be said for the inadequate portion of codfish; and this was something, for Elfreda’s appetite being extremely healthy, a week of the daily schoolroom ration had sharpened it to the keenness of a razor’s edge.
Fortitude was certainly needed for such a situation, but Elfreda was fully determined “to stick it out.” Just what was involved in that process would have been difficult to say. She had no definite scheme in her mind, but apart from sheer physical discomfort and boredom, which were by no means to be lightly faced, she was still enjoying the comedy she had so audaciously created. Her mood remained highly rebellious. A second letter from her mother, redirected by Pikey from Clavering Park, was so full of calm assumptions, that it merely added fuel to the flame. But when all was said, it was the position in which she found herself now that really made the thing worth while. The fighting blood of her turbulent forbears had been aroused. She was determined to avenge the covert insults of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson and of her niece, Miss Dolores Parbury.