He managed to get out: “His father was my friend; he sent the boy to me and I’ve been a bad guardian.” He made a gesture of despair. “Put yourself in my place. Let Dan Blair go, Lily; let him go.”
Her eyelids flickered a little, and she said sharply: “You’re out of your senses, Gordon—and what if I love him?”
With a low exclamation he caught her hand at the wrist so hard that she cried out, and he said between his teeth: “You don’t love him! Take those words back!”
“Of course I do. Let me free!”
“No,” he said passionately, holding her fast. “Not until you take that back.”
His face, his tone, his force, dominated her; the remembrance of their past, a possible future, made her waver under his eyes, and the woman smiled at him as Blair had never seen her smile.
“Very well, then, goose,” she capitulated almost tenderly; “I don’t love that boy, of course. I’m marrying him for his money. Now, will you let me go?”
But he held her still more firmly and kissed her several times before he finally set her free, and went out of the house miserable—bound to her by the strongest chains—bound in his conscience and by honor to his trust to Dan’s father, and yet handicapped by another sense of honor which decrees that man must keep silence to the end.
CHAPTER XVII—LETTY LANE SINGS
The house of the Duchess of Breakwater in Park Lane was white, with green blinds and green balconies; beautiful, distinguished and old, mellow with traditions, and the tide of fashion poured its stream into the music-room to listen to the Sunday concert. Without, the day was bland and beautiful, mild spring in the deep sweet air, and already the bloom lay over the park and along the turf. Piccadilly was ablaze with flowers, and in the windows and in the flower-women’s baskets they were so sweet as to make the heart ache and to make the senses thrill. Keen to the spring beauty, the last guest to go into the drawing-room of the Duchess of Breakwater was the young American man in whom the magic of the season had stirred the blood. He seemed the youngest and the brightest guest to cross the sill of the great house whose debts he was going to pay, and whose future he was going to secure with American money.