“Dear Mrs. Kingsward, you always take the best view; but if you had seen him, as I did, holding the woman’s hand, bending over her with such a look!—I was afraid he would kiss her, there, before everybody. And I, knowing of the engagement, and that he had just left you—before Miss Tatham said a word—I sat and stared, and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the tenth of September, and he had left Bee, hadn’t he, the night before?”
“I never remember dates,” said Mrs. Kingsward, querulously.
“I do,” replied the visitor, “and I took the trouble to find out. At least, I found out by accident, through someone who saw him at the club, and who had just discovered the rights of that story about Miss Lance. Oh, I trust you will not be beguiled by his being a good parti, or that sort of thing, to trust dear Bee in such hands! Marriage is always rather a disenchantment; but think what it would be in such a case—a man that can’t be trusted to travel between Cologne and London without——”
“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” said Mrs. Kingsward; and Bee heard that her mother had melted into tears.
“That is as good as saying you don’t believe me, who saw it with my own eyes,” said the visitor, getting up. “Indeed, I didn’t mean at all to distress you, for I thought that, as everything was broken off—I thought only if you had any doubts, as one has sometimes after one has settled a thing—that to know he was a man like that, with no respect for anything, who could leave his fiancée, and just plunge, plunge—there is no other word for it——”
It was evident that Mrs. Kingsward, reduced to helplessness, here made no effort either to detain her visitor or to contradict her further, or indeed to make any remark. There was a step or two across the room, and then Mrs. Chichester said again—“Good-bye, dear. I am very sorry to have distressed you—but I couldn’t leave you in ignorance of such a thing for dear Bee’s sake; that is the one thing to be thankful for in the whole matter, that Bee doesn’t seem to mind a bit! She looks just as bright and just as nice as if nothing had happened. She can’t have cared for him! Only flattered, I suppose, and pleased to have a proposal—as those little things are, poor things. We should all thank heaven on our knees that there’s no question of a broken heart in Bee’s case——”
She might not have been so sure of that had she seen the figure which came through the window the moment the door had closed upon her—Bee with her blue eyes blazing wildly out of her white face, and strange passion in every line both of features and form.
“What is the meaning of it?” she said, briefly, with dry lips.
“Oh, Bee, you have heard it all!”
“I have heard enough—what does it mean, mamma?”