"Why, with Patricia, of course."
"Help you to square yourself with Patricia?" She laughed outright, but without mirth. "I am afraid I don't at all understand you, Roderick. I supposed you had already accomplished that much, for you told me—did you not?—that Patricia has just accepted you?"
"Yes, and that's the devil of it!" was the unexpected astounding reply. Beatrice moved farther away from him, and took her hand from his grasp, in well-simulated horror of what he had said.
"Let us, at least, confine ourselves to the usages and language of polite society;" she said, with mock severity. "We will leave the devil out of it, if you please. Besides, you amaze me! Patricia has just accepted you, and that is 'the devil of it.' Really, I can't guess what you mean by such a paradoxical statement as that."
"Forgive me. I am so wrought up that I scarcely know what I am talking about, or what I am doing. As I said before, I have managed to get things into a terrible mess, and I believe that you, Beatrice, are the only person alive who can unravel the tangle for me. Will you help me out? Will you?"
"You must tell me what it is, before I commit myself. You are so very aggravating, in words and manner, that I cannot even attempt to understand you."
For just a few moments, he hesitated. There was within him the feeling that he would outrage Patricia's ideas of the fitness of things, if he should take Beatrice Brunswick into his confidence and relate to her all that had occurred this afternoon and evening. But, on the other hand, he saw in this beautiful girl a personification of the straw at which a drowning man grasps. He knew that she was, personally, closer to Patricia than any other friend had been, and that she understood Patricia better than did anyone else, save Stephen Langdon, perhaps. He knew, also, that he could trust her, and that he could rely, implicitly, upon her loyalty. He knew that she would never betray the secrets he would be obliged to tell concerning Stephen Langdon's affairs. He had tried her often, and he had never found her wanting. Therefore, he felt that the greatest secret of all, concerning the financial extremity in which Stephen Langdon had become involved, would be safe with Beatrice Brunswick. Manlike, he began very stupidly and very strangely.
"By Jove, Beatrice!" he exclaimed. "I wish I might have fallen in love with you, instead of with Patricia! You would never have seen things in the light she does!"
Beatrice's eyes widened and deepened; then, they narrowed so that she almost frowned. She bit her lips with vexation, and for an instant was angry. At last, she laughed. She did not wish him to know how deeply he had wounded her by that careless statement, so she uttered a care-free ripple of laughter.
"I don't quite know whether I should take that as a compliment or not," she replied. "It is more than likely that I would have conducted myself very much worse than Patricia has done in this affair which you have not as yet explained to me. Perhaps, it is a fortunate thing for both of us that you did not fall in love with me, instead of her. I'm sure I don't know what I should have done with you, in such a case. But I will help you if I can; only, understand in the beginning that if you tell me the story at all, you must tell me all of it. I don't want any half-confidences, Roderick."