“Am I to understand,” he said, with dreadful distinctness, “that your brother and Mrs North are trying to make use of you to extract information from me? No, I will not suspect your brother. No man would stoop to employ such an expedient—so degrading to my future wife, so affronting to myself. It is Mrs North’s doing.”
Mabel, who had listened in horrified silence, sprang to her feet at this point as if stung. “I think it will be as well for me to return you this,” she said, laying upon the table the ring of “finest Europe make,” which the Commissioner had been fain to purchase from the chief jeweller in the bazaar as a makeshift until the diamond hoop for which he had sent to Bombay could arrive. “You have grossly insulted both Georgia and me, and—and I never wish to speak to you again.”
She meant to sweep impressively from the room, but the angry tears that filled her eyes made her blunder against the table, and Mr Burgrave, raising himself with a wild effort, caught her hand. “Mabel, come here,” he said, and furious with herself for yielding, she obeyed. “Give me that ring, please.” He restored it solemnly to its place on her finger. “Now we are on speaking terms again. Dear little girl, forgive me. I was wrong, unpardonably wrong, but I never thought your generous little heart would lead you so far in opposing my expressed wish. I admire the impulse, my darling, but when you come to know me better you will understand how unlikely it is that I should yield to it. Come, dear, look sunny again, or must I make a heroic attempt to go down on my knees with one leg in splints?”
“Oh, if you would only understand!” sighed Mabel. She was kneeling beside him again, occupying quite undeservedly, as she felt, the position of suppliant. “If only I could make you see——”
“See what?” he asked, taking her face in his hands and kissing it. “I see that my little girl thinks me an old brute. Won’t she believe me if I assure her on my honour that I am trying to do the best I can for her brother, and that I hope I have found a way of putting things right?”
“Have you, really?” Her bright smile was a sufficient reward. “Oh, Eustace, if it’s all settled happily, I shall love you for ever!”
The assurance did not seem to promise much that was new when the relative position of those concerned was considered, but the unsolicited kiss bestowed upon him was very grateful to Mr Burgrave, and he smiled kindly as he released Mabel and bade her run away and change her habit. She left the room gaily enough, but once outside, a sudden wave of recollection swept over her, and she wrung her hands wildly.
“I was free—free!” she cried to herself. “Just for a moment I was free, and I let him fetch me back. Oh, what can I do? I believe I could be quite fond of him if he would let me, but he won’t. And if he wasn’t so good I should delight to break it off in the most insulting way possible, but his virtues are the worst thing about him. I hate them! Is this sort of thing to go on for a whole lifetime—beating against a stone wall and bruising my hands, and then being kissed and given a sweet, and told not to cry? Mabel Louisa North, you are a silly fool, and you deserve just what you have got. I hate and despise you, and with my latest breath I shall say, Serve you right!”
“Oh, Dick, has it come?” Georgia sprang up to meet her husband, as he entered the room with a gloomy face.
“No, but so far as I can see, it’s close at hand. I can’t quite make things out, but Burgrave seems to have altered his plans astonishingly. Instead of travelling down to the coast at once, he is going to stay here another week, and hold a durbar at Nalapur. I have to send word to Beltring at once to get the big shamiana put up in the Agency grounds, and to see that all the Sardars have notice. What does it mean?”