CHAPTER XXVIII.
"Oh but—but," cried Elfrida, tragic-eyed, "you don't understand, my friend. And these pretences of mine are unendurable—I won't make another. This is the real reason why I can't go to your house: Janet knows —everything there is to know. I told her—I myself—in a fit of rage ten days ago, and then she said things and I said things, and—and there is nothing now between us any more!"
Lawrence Cardiff looked grave. "I am sorry for that," he said.
A middle-aged gentleman in apparently hopeless love does not confide in his grown-up daughter, and Janet's father had hardly thought of her seriously in connection with this new relation, which was to him so precarious and so sweet. Its realization had never been close enough for practical considerations; it was an image, something in the clouds; and if he still hoped and longed for its materialization there were times when he feared even to regard it too closely lest it should vanish. His first thought at this announcement of Elfrida's was of what it might signify of change, what bearing it had upon her feeling, upon her intention. Then he thought of its immediate results, which seemed to be unfortunate. But in the instant he had for reflection he did not consider Janet at all.
"Ah, yes! It was contemptible—but contemptible! I did it partly to hurt her, and partly, I think, to gratify my vanity. You would not have thought anything so bad of me perhaps?" She looked up at him childishly. They were strolling about the quiet spaces of the Temple Courts. It was a pleasant afternoon in February, the new grass was pushing up. They could be quite occupied with one another—they had the place almost to themselves. Elfrida's well-fitting shabby little jacket hung unbuttoned, and she swung Cardiff's light walking-stick as they sauntered. He, with his eyes on her delicately flushed face and his hands unprofessorially in his pockets, was counting the minutes that were left them.
"You wouldn't have, would you?" she insisted.
"I would think any womanly fault you like of you," he laughed, "but one—the fear to confess it."
Elfrida shut her lips with a little proud smile. "Do you know," she said confidingly, "when you say things like that to me I like you very much—but very much!"
"But not enough," he answered her quickly, "never enough,
Frida?"
The girl's expression changed. "You are not to call me 'Frida,'" she said, frowning a little. "It has an association that will always be painful to me. When people—disappoint me, I try to forget them in every way I can." She paused, and Cardiff saw that her eyes were full of tears. He had an instant of intense resentment against his daughter. What brutality had she been guilty of toward Elfrida in that moment of unreasonable jealousy that surged up between them? He would fiercely like to know. But Elfrida was smiling again, looking up at him in wilful disregard of her wet eyes.