Part 44

"No. I feel it. There isn't another book in me. I'm done for, Nicky."

Her tears were hanging now on the curve of her eyelashes. They shook and fell.

She sat there silent, fronting the abyss. Nicky was horrified and looked it. If that was how she took it----

"You've overworked yourself. That's all," he said presently.

"Yes. That's all."

She rose. "Nicky," she said, "it's half-past four. If we're going we must go."

"Are you sure you want to?"

"Of course I want to." She said it in a tone that for Nicky pointed to another blunder.

"I only thought," said he simply, "it might bore you."

XII

Miss Bickersteth's house was round the corner. So small a house that a front room and a back room thrown together hardly gave Caro space enough for tea-parties. But as the back room formed a recess, what space she had was admirably adapted for the discreet arrangement of conversation in groups. Its drawback was that persons in the recess remained unaware of those who entered by the door of the front room, until they were actually upon them.

Through that door, opened gently by the little servant, Miss Bickersteth, in the recess, was heard inquiring with some excitement, "Can't either of you tell me who she is?"

Only Nina and Laura were with her. Jane knew from their abrupt silence, as she entered, that they had been discussing George Tanqueray's marriage. She gathered that they had only just begun. There was nothing for it but to invite them to go on, to behave in all things as if nothing had happened, or could happen to her.

"Please don't stop," she said, "it sounds exciting."

"It is. But Mr. Nicholson disapproves of scandal," said Caro, not without address.

"He's been talking nothing else to me," said Jane.

"Yes, but his scandal and our scandal----"

"Yours isn't in it with his. He's seen her."

Three faces turned to Nicholson's, as if it held for them the reflection of his vision. Miss Bickersteth's face was flushed with embarrassment that struggled with curiosity; Nina's was almost fierce in its sombre, haggard intensity; Laura's, in its stillness, had an appealing anxiety, an innocent distress. It was shadowless and unashamed; it expressed a trouble that had in it no taint of self.

Nicky met them with an admirable air of light-heartedness. "Don't look at me," he said. "I can't tell you anything."

"But--you've seen her," said Miss Bickersteth, seating herself at her tea-table.

"I've seen her, but I don't know her," he said stiffly.

"She doesn't seem to have impressed him favourably," remarked Miss Bickersteth to the world in general.

Nicky brought tea to Jane, who opened her eyes at him in deprecation of his alarming reticence. It was as if she had said, "Oh, Nicky--to please me--won't you say nice things about her?"

He understood. "Miss Holland would like me to tell you that she is charming."

"Do you know her, Jinny?" It was Laura who spoke.

"No, dear. But I know George Tanqueray."

"As for Nicky," she went on, with high daring, "you mustn't mind what he says. He wouldn't think any mortal woman good enough for George."