"No, confound her!" swore I.
"Confound her? Et pourquoi! Hasn't she a right to do what she likes?"
"Of course she has, the cursed little flirt; but she'd no earthly business to go making such love to Fairlie. It's a rascally shame, and I don't care if I tell her so myself."
"She'll only say you're in love with her too," was Gower's sensible response. "I'm not surprised myself. I always said she was an out-and-out coquette."
I met Fairlie coming out of his room as I went up to mine. He looked as men will look when they have not been in bed all night, and have watched the sun up with painful thoughts for their companions.
"You have been——" he began; then stopped short, unwilling or unable to put the question into words.
"After Belle? Yes. It is no hoax, Geraldine met him herself."
I did not relish telling him, and therefore told it, in all probability, bluntly and blunderingly—tact, like talk, having, they say, been given to women. A spasm passed over his face. "Herself!" he echoed. Until then I do not think he had realized it as even possible.
"Yes, there was no doubt about it. What a wretched little coquette she must have been; she always seemed to make such game of Belle——"
But Fairlie, saying something about his gloves that he had left behind, had gone back into his room again before I had half done my sentence. When Belle came back, about half an hour afterwards, with an affected air of triumph, and for once in his life of languid sensations really well contented, Gower and I poured questions upon him, as, done up with the toil of his dusty walk, and horrified to find himself so low-bred as to be hot, he kicked off his varnished boots, imbibed Seltzer, and fanned himself with a periodical before he could find breath to answer us.