Part 66

He looked out of the window in silence, and presently became aware that Phillida was weeping.

"O God! let me die," she murmured in a broken voice. "I am doomed to work only misery in the world. Isn't it enough to have blighted the happiness of Charley, whom I loved and still love in spite of myself? Must I also plunge Philip into misery who has been more than a brother to me? If I could only die and escape from this wretched life before I do any further harm."

"I am sorry that I said anything, Phillida. Forget it. Forget it, please." He said in an alarmed voice, rising as he spoke.

"Cousin," said Phillida, "you are the best friend I have. But you must not love me. There is nothing left for me. Nothing--but to die. Good-by."

That evening Philip did not appear at dinner and his mother sent to inquire the reason.

"Mr. Philip says he has a headache, and will not come down," said the maid on her return.

After dinner the mother sought his room with a cup of coffee and a bit of toast. Philip was lying on the lounge in his book-room with the gas turned low.

"What's the matter, Philip? Is your throat sore? Are there any signs of diphtheria?" demanded his mother anxiously.

"No, I am all right. A little out of sorts. Only just let me be quiet."

"Has anything gone wrong?"

"Nothing more than common."

"Something has worried you. Now, Philip, I can see plainly that you are worrying about Phillida. Why don't you speak your mind if you care for her, and have it over with?"

"It is over with, mother," said Philip.

"And she refused you?" said Mrs. Gouverneur, with rising indignation, for she thought it rather a descent for Philip to offer himself to Phillida or to anybody else.

"No, she didn't refuse me. I didn't formally offer myself. But I let her know how I felt toward her. She'll never accept me."

"May be she will," said the mother. "Girls don't like to accept at the first hint."

"No, she was kind and even affectionate with me, and broke her heart over my confession that I loved her, so that I'm afraid I have done her a great deal of harm."

"How do you know she will never accept you, you faint-hearted boy?"

"She let me see her whole heart. She loves Charley Millard as much as ever, but, I think, for some reason she doesn't expect or wish a renewal of the engagement. She called me the best friend she had in the world, next to Charley Millard. That's an end of it. A good deal more of an end of it than a flat refusal might have been."

"She's a foolish and perverse girl, who has compromised her family and ruined her own prospects," said Mrs. Gouverneur. "Your aunt told me to-day that Dr. Gunstone thinks she is going to die of her disappointment about Charley unless the engagement can be renewed. But Phillida has determined not to allow a renewal of it. She's always doing something foolish. Now, eat a little dinner, or take your coffee at least."

"Leave the things here, mother. May be I'll eat after a while."

Half an hour later Mrs. Gouverneur, uneasy regarding Philip, returned to his library to find the food as she had left it.

On inquiry she learned that Philip had just gone out. Whither and for what purpose he had sallied forth dinnerless she could not divine, and the strangeness of his action did not reassure her. She was on the point of speaking to her husband about it, but he had so little in common with Philip, and was of a temper so fixed and stolid, that his advice would not have availed anything. It never did avail anything certainly in the first hour or two after dinner.

XXXIX.

PHILIP IMPROVES AN OPPORTUNITY.

The intimacy between Millard and Philip Gouverneur had long languished. Philip was naturally critical of Charley after he became the accepted lover of Phillida, and their relations were not bettered by the breaking off of the engagement. Phillida's cousin felt that he owed it to her not to seem to condemn her in the matter by a too great intimacy with the lover who had jilted or been jilted by her, nobody could tell which, not even the pair themselves. Moreover Philip had for years taken a faint pleasure in considering himself as a possible suitor to Phillida. He found the enjoyment of a solitary cigar enhanced by his ruminations regarding the possibilities of a life glorified--no weaker word could express his thought--by the companionship of Phillida, little as he had ever hoped for such a culmination of his wishes. But this love for Phillida served to complicate his relations with Millard. So that it had now been long since he had visited The Graydon. Nevertheless on this evening of his sudden and dinnerless departure from home, the night clerk remembered him and let him go up to apartment 79 without the ceremony of sending his card.

Millard, who was writing, received Philip with some surprise and a curiosity mixed with solicitude regarding the purpose of his call. But he put up his pen and spoke with something of the old cordial manner that had won the heart of Gouverneur some years before.

"I'm glad to see you again, Philip. I began to think you were not coming any more. Sit down," said Millard. "How is book-collecting? Anything startling lately?" he added by way of launching the talk, as he usually did on the favorite subject of his companion.