Part 8

She tried to look defiantly into his eyes--those fine eyes of his which were watching her so intently--tried to meet them steadily with her own lovely, tear-stained ones--and failed. Swiftly an intense colour dyed her cheeks, and she dropped her head like a guilty child.

"Of course I care--that is, in a way," she was somehow forced to admit before the bar of his silence. "Why shouldn't I hate to lose the friend who used to carry my books to school, and fought the other boys for my sake, and has been a brother to me all these years? Of course I do. And when I am tired I cry for nothing--just nothing. I----"

It was certainly a brave attempt at eloquence, but perhaps it was not wonderfully convincing. At all events it did not keep Anthony from taking possession of one of her hands and interrupting her with a most irrelevant speech.

"Juliet, do you remember telling me that you should expect a man who loved you to carry your likeness always with him? And you asked me for hers--and I had to own I had left it behind. Yet I had one with me then--it is always with me--and that was why I forgot the other. Look."

He drew out a little silver case, and Juliet, reluctantly releasing one eye from the shelter of the friendly sofa pillow, saw with a start her own face look smiling back at her. It was a little picture of her girlish self which she had given him long ago when he went away to college.

"No," he said quickly, as he recognised the indignant question which instantly showed in her eyes, "I'm not disloyal to Eleanor Langham. Because--dear--there is no such person."

With a little cry she flung herself away from him among the pillows, hiding her face from sight. There was a moment's silence while Anthony Robeson, his own face growing pale with the immensity of the stakes for which he played, made his last venture.

"The little home is only for you, Juliet. If you won't share it with me it shall be closed and sold. Perhaps it was an audacious thing to do--it has come over me a great many times that it was too audacious ever to be forgiven. But I couldn't help the hope that if you should make the home yourself you might come to feel that life with a man who had his way to make could be borne after all--if you loved him enough. It all depended on that. As I said, I didn't mean to be presumptuous, but it was a desperate chance with me, dear. I couldn't give you up, and I thought perhaps--just perhaps--you cared--more than you knew. Anyhow--I loved you so--I had to risk it."

Juliet's charming brown head was buried so deep in the pillows that only its back with the masses of waving, half-rumpled hair was visible. But up from the depths came a smothered question:

"The photograph?"

Anthony's face lightened as if the sun had struck it, but he kept his voice quiet. "Borrowed--it's my old friend Dennison's. I never even saw the girl--though I ought to beg her pardon for the use I have made of her face. She's married now, and lives abroad somewhere. Will you forgive me?"

He was standing over her, leaning down so that his cheek touched the rumpled hair. "How is it, Juliet? Could you live in the little home--with love--and me?"

It was a long time before he got any answer. But at last a flushed, wet, radiant face came into view, an arm was reached out, and as with an inarticulate, deep note of joy he drew her up into his embrace, a voice, half tears, half laughter, cried:

"Oh, Tony--you dear, bad, darling, insolent boy! I did think I could do without you--but I can't. And--oh, Tony"--she was sobbing in his arms now, while he regarded the top of her head with laughing, exultant eyes--"I'm so glad--so glad--so glad--there isn't any Eleanor Langham! Oh, how I hated her!"

"Did you, sweetheart?" he answered, laughing aloud now. Then bending, with his lips close to hers--"well, to tell the truth--to tell the honest truth, little girl--so did I!"

VII.--AN ARGUMENT WITHOUT LOGIC

"I don't like it," repeated Mr. Horatio Marcy, obstinately, and shook his head for the fifth time. "I've not a word to say against Anthony, my dear--not a word. He's a fine fellow and comes of a good family, and I respect him and the start he has made since things went to pieces, but----"

Juliet waited, her eyes downcast, her cheeks very much flushed, her mouth in lines of mutiny.

"But--" her father continued, settling back in his chair with an air of decision, "you will certainly make the mistake of your life if you think you can be happy in the sort of existence he offers you. You're not used to it. You've not been brought up to it. You can spend more money in a forenoon than he can earn in a twelve-month. You don't know how to adapt yourself to life on a basis of rigid economy. I----"

"You don't forbid it, sir?"

"Forbid it?--no. A man can't forbid a twenty-four year old woman to do as she pleases. But I advise you--I warn you--I ask you seriously to consider what it all means. You are used to very many habits of living which will be entirely beyond Anthony's means for many years to come. You are fond of travel--of dress--of social----"

"Father dear," said his daughter, interrupting him gently by a change of tactics. She came to him and sat upon the arm of his chair, and rested her cheek lightly upon the top of his thick, iron-gray locks.--"Let's drop all this for the present. Let's not discuss it. I want you to do me a particular favour before we say another word about it. Come with me down to see the house. It's only three hours away. We can go after breakfast to-morrow and be back for dinner at seven. It's all I ask. My arguments are all there. Please!--Please!"

So it came about that at eleven o'clock on a certain morning in August, Mr. Horatio Marcy discovered himself to be eyeing with critical, reluctant gaze a quaintly attractive, low-spreading white house among trees and vines. He became aware at the same time of a sudden close clasp on his arm.

"Here it is," said a low voice in his ear. "Does it look habitable?"

"Very pretty, very pretty, my dear," Mr. Marcy admitted. No sane man could do otherwise. The little house might have been placed very comfortably between the walls of the dining-room at the Marcy country house, but there was an indefinable, undeniable air of gracious hospitality and homelikeness about its aspect, and its surroundings gave it an appearance of being ample for the accommodation of any two people not anxious to get away from each other.

Juliet produced an antique door-key of a clumsy pattern, and opened the door into the living-room. She ran across to the windows and threw them open, then turned to see what expression might be at the moment illumining Mr. Marcy's face. He was glancing about him with curious eyes, which rested finally upon the portrait of a courtly gentleman in ruffles and flowing hair, hanging above the fireplace. He adjusted a pair of eyeglasses and gave the portrait the honour of his serious attention.

"That is an ancestor," Juliet explained. "Doesn't he give distinction to the room? And isn't the room--well--just a little bit distinguished-looking itself, in spite of its simplicity?--because of it, perhaps. The tables and most of the chairs are what Anthony found left in the old Kentucky homestead after the sale last year, and bought in with--the last of his money." Her eyes were very bright, but her voice was quiet.

Mr. Marcy looked at the furniture in question, stared at the walls, then at the rug on the polished floor. The rug held his attention for two long minutes, then he glanced sharply at his daughter.