[CHAPTER VIII]
When they had driven away Sidney wandered off beyond the outskirts of the crowd to a lonely spot among the trees, where he walked up and down, whistling softly to himself and pausing from time to time to aim a blow at the head of an unoffending daisy with his stick.
“What an ass I am,” he exclaimed presently in heartfelt tones, but a listener who had fancied he was alluding to his foolish gambling on the turf would have been mistaken. His thoughts were engaged on quite a different and much pleasanter subject.
How lovely she had looked! How sorry she had seemed! What sympathy had shone in her eyes as she listened to his discreditable troubles. How determined she had been to find a way out; surely she could not show such interest in the concerns of all her acquaintances.
The way out, by the by, now that he thought of it dispassionately, was hardly, perhaps, quite one that a man could take after all and keep the little self-respect left to him; but it was overwhelmingly sweet that she should have lost sight so completely of all considerations except the one of retrieving his fortunes.
He had always liked and admired her, of course, but never till to-day had he realised what a loyal, brave spirit dwelt behind those sea-blue, childish eyes. There was no girl in the world like her, and was it unduly conceited of him to think she must like him a little to show such agitation at the tale of his misfortunes? And here he frowned and pulled himself up short. What business had he, a ruined gambler, a man whose career was, to all intents and purposes, at an end, to think twice about any girl, much less to feel so absurdly happy? He determined heroically to banish Barbara from his thoughts, and in pursuance of that excellent resolution walked off across the Park at such a tearing speed that little boys whom he passed asked derisively where the other competitors in the race had got to.
. . . . .
It was on the following morning that Mrs. Vanderstein made certain confidences to Barbara, thereby dashing to earth the high hopes she had built of rescuing Sidney from the ruinous meshes in which he had entangled himself.
To that which Mrs. Vanderstein told her the girl listened at first with incredulity, but a scoffing comment was received with such extreme disfavour that she dared not venture another; and finally, as she heard more and fuller accounts and Mrs. Vanderstein, chafing under a sense of her friend’s disbelief, went so far as to produce written evidence of the truth of the story, Barbara was no longer able to deny to herself that the astounding tale was undoubtedly not the joke she had taken it for, but represented the plain facts of the case.