When Lady Remington and Mr Muirhead had left the room to stroll around the gardens, Hilda exclaimed: “Oh, Raife. This is all very wonderful. I did not believe such places existed outside storybooks. Your mother is a darling. I love her already. I’m glad I don’t have to stamp my foot and shake my fist, as I told you I would in Cairo, if she didn’t like me.”
Raife kissed her again and again, and through the kisses said: “How do you know she likes you?”
Imitating Raife’s accents, she said: “Woman’s instinct, dear boy, woman’s instinct. Besides, she wouldn’t have kissed me so hard if she didn’t like me.”
The words were hardly finished when he seized her, exclaiming: “That settles it! Then I’ll show you I more than like you, I love you!” And he kissed her until she pretended that it hurt.
Now, at last, were Raife’s ideals realised, and complete happiness was nearly his. There could be no other spectres or phantoms to cast a shadow over their pure love. Hilda broke away and ran to the other side of the room. The window was open and she looked out, crying: “Oh, do come, Raife, look at that wonderful clump of rhododendrons.”
She did not see it, but a pained expression crossed his face as he came to the window, and, placing an arm around her, they looked down together on the rhododendrons. Why could not happiness last? What was the curse that at every turn blighted his fondest hopes? The last time he had looked on those rhododendrons was on that fateful dark night, when Gilda Tempest, the burglar—the burglar whom he had fancied that he loved—slid down the silken rope from the window, and disappeared in their dark shadows. And now the hideous memory came to his mind, to destroy his brightest hopes, his dream of bliss. He turned away, leaving Hilda at the window. He stood lighting a cigarette, and again his gaze chanced in a tragic direction. In front of him was the safe, where his father had shot and killed the burglar, and there, the spot where his murdered father had, in his dying words, stammered out, in choking gulps to Edgson, the awful warning to Raife, his son, to “beware of the trap—she—that woman.” Who was that woman and what was the trap? Again, that was the spot where he had nearly shot Gilda Tempest, the second burglar. Why, oh why, had his mother chosen this room in which to receive his beloved Hilda—his fiancée?
Calling to Hilda, he said: “Come, Hilda, let us go downstairs and find your father. They have gone into the grounds, and won’t be far away.”
They went downstairs, she on to the terrace, and he into a morning-room. He rang the bell and Edgson, the butler, entered. “Mix me a stiff whisky and soda, Edgson, please.”
The old man eyed his master quizzically as he handed him the cool drink in a long, sparkling tumbler. “Aren’t you feeling well, Sir Raife?”
Between gulps, Raife replied: “Oh, yes, Edgson, only a bit tired, thank you.”