Part 41

He shook off these idle fancies--a man should not give way to them--and walked up the room with a steady assured tread. Even then she did not seem to hear him till he spoke.

"Well, do you like it?" he asked, leaning against a table in the middle of the upper part of the room, a few feet from the chair where she sat. Now Mina Zabriska made out two figures, cast up by the bright light against the darkness, and watched them with an eagerness that had no reason in it.

"Like it!" she cried, springing to her feet, running to him, holding out her hands. "Like it! Oh, Harry! Why, it's better than all the rest. Better, even better!"

"It's rather a jolly room," said Harry. "The pictures and all the things about make it look well."

"Oh, I'm not going to say anything if you talk like that. You don't feel like that!--'Rather a jolly room!' That's what one says if the inn parlor's comfortable. This isn't a room. It's--it's----"

"Shall we call it a temple?" he suggested, smiling.

"I believe it's heaven--the private particular Tristram heaven. They're all here!" She waved toward the pictures. "Here in a heaven of their own."

"And we're allowed to visit it before we die?"

"Yes. At least I am. You let me visit it. It belongs to you--to the dead and you."

"Do you want to stay here any longer?" he asked with a sudden roughness.

"Yes, lots longer," she laughed defiantly, quite undismayed. "You needn't, though. You'll have it all your life. Perhaps I shall never have it again. Father's better! And I don't know if you'll ever ask us here again. You never did before, you know. So I mean to have all of it I can get." She darted away from him and ran back to the miniatures. A richly ornamented sword hung on the wall just above them. This caught her notice; she took it down and unsheathed it.

"Henricus Baro Tristram de Blent," she spelt out from the enamelled steel. "Per Ensem Justitia. What does that mean? No, I know. Rather a good motto, cousin Harry. 'That he shall take who has the power, and he shall keep who can!' That was his justice, I expect!"

"Do you quarrel with it? If this was all yours, would you give it up?"

"Not without a fight!" she laughed. "Per Ensem Justitia!" She waved the blade.

Harry left her busy with the things that were so great a delight and walked to the window at the other end of the long room. Thence he watched, now her, now the clouds that lounged off and on to the moon's disk. More and more, though, his eyes were caught by her and glued to her; she was the centre of the room; it seemed all made and prepared for her even as it had seemed for Addie Tristram. The motto ran in his head--Per Ensem Justitia. What was the justice and what the sword? He awoke to the cause of the changed mood in him and of the agitation in which he had been living. It was nothing to defy the law, to make light of a dry abstraction, to find right against it in his blood. His opponent now was no more the law, it was no more even some tiresome, unknown, unrealized girl in London, with surroundings most unpicturesque and associations that had no power to touch his heart. Here was the enemy, this creature whose every movement claimed the blood that was hers, whose coming repaired the loss Blent had suffered in losing Addie Tristram, whose presence crowned its charms with a new glory. Nature that fashioned her in the Tristram image--had it not put in her hand the sword by which she should win justice? The thought passed through his mind now without a shock; he seemed to see her mistress of Blent; for the moment he forgot himself as anyone save an onlooker; he did not seem concerned.

Once more he roused himself. He had fallen into a fear of the fancies that threatened to carry him he did not know where. He wanted to get away from this room with its suggestions, and from the presence that gave them such force.

"Aren't you ready yet?" he called to her. "It's getting late."

"Are you still there?" she cried back in a gay affectation of surprise. "I'd forgotten all about you, I thought I had it to myself. I was trying to think it was all mine."

"Shall we go downstairs?" His voice was hard and constrained.

"No, I won't," she said squarely. "I can't go. It's barely ten o'clock. Come, we'll talk here. You smoke--or is that high treason?--and I'll sit here." She threw herself into Addie Tristram's great chair. There was a triumphant gayety in her air that spoke of her joy in all about her, of her sense of the boundless satisfaction that her surroundings gave. "I love it all so much," she murmured, half perhaps to herself, yet still as a plea to him that he would not seek to hurry her from the place.

Harry turned away, again with that despair on him. She gave him permission to go, but he could not leave her--neither her nor now the room. Yet he was afraid that he could not answer for himself if he stayed. It was too strange that every association, and every tradition, and every emotion which had through all the years seemed to justify and even to sanctify his own position and the means he was taking to preserve it, should in two or three days begin to desert him, and should now in this hour openly range themselves against him and on her side; so that all he invoked to aid him pleaded for her, all that he had prayed to bless him and his enterprise blessed her and cursed the work to which he had put his hand.

Which of them could best face the world without Blent? Which of them could best look the world in the face having Blent? These were the questions that rose in his mind with tempestuous insistence.

"I could sit here forever," she murmured, a lazy enjoyment succeeding to the agile movements of her body and the delighted agitation of her nerves. "It just suits me to sit here, cousin Harry. Looking like a great lady!" Her eyes challenged him to deny that she looked the part to perfection. She glanced through the window. "I met that funny little Madame Zabriska who lives up at Merrion Lodge to-day. She seems very anxious to know all about us."

"Madame Zabriska has a healthy--or unhealthy--curiosity." The mention of Mina was a fresh prick. Mina knew; suddenly he hated that she should know.

"Is she in love with you?" asked Cecily, mockingly yet languidly, indeed as a great lady might inquire about the less exalted, condescending to be amused.

"Nobody's in love with me, not even the girl who's going to marry me."

"To marry you?" She sat up, looking at him. "Are you engaged?"

"Yes, to Janie Iver. You know who I mean?"