you mislaid something the other night?" Her dark eyes were dancing with mockery, and her lips twitched.
Now he looked at her suspiciously. "I don't understand."
"You might. I'm referring to your temper."
"I'm not aware that I said anything rude to you. If I did, I apologise."
"I'm not speaking of myself, but of my friends – my guests."
He leant his arm on the table which stood between them. "Meaning Mr. Arthur Lisle?"
"The smoke of your pipe blows in my face when you lean forward like that."
"Sorry!" He laid his pipe down beside him. "Well, the fact is, I'm about fed up with Lisle."
And Arthur Lisle was much in the same case – allowing for the difference of expression – as to Sidney! Marie smiled, but her brow wrinkled. "Sorry you don't like him, but it costs nothing to be polite."
"Well, all I can say is that I shall be very much obliged if you'll ask us on different evenings."
"That's assuming that I'm going to ask you on any evenings at all."
She thought this smart flick of her whip would bring him to reason.
"Oh, perhaps Lisle's going to be there every evening?"
"Any evening that he likes, Pops and I will be very pleased to see him – with or without an invitation." She relented a little; he looked angry and obstinate, but he looked handsome too. "You too, if you won't be silly. Why do you dislike him so much?"
He could not give her the whole reason; he gave what he could. "I see his game. He's always trying to come the swell over me and the rest of us."
"I'm sure he doesn't mean to; it's just – "
"His naturally aristocratic manner?" he sneered.
Marie sat up straight and looked composedly at him. By now she was angry – and she meant to hurt. "That's exactly it, Sidney," she said, "and it's a pity everybody hasn't got it."
She did hurt sorely. He had no code to keep him from hitting back, and his wrath was fierce. "Where did you learn so much about aristocratic manners? Behind the counter?"
She flushed hotly; tears came in her eyes. He saw what he had done, and was touched to a sudden remorse.
"Oh, I say, Marie, I didn't mean – !"
"I shan't forget that," she said. "Never!"
He shrugged his shoulders and stuck his pipe back in his mouth. He was ashamed, but obstinate still. "You brought it on yourself," he grumbled.
"Yes, I forgot that I wasn't talking to a gentleman."
He made one more effort after reconciliation. "Look here, Marie, you know what I think of you – "
"Yes, I do – you've just told me."
"Damnation!" he muttered, pulling at his pipe. Marie, looking carefully past him, began to put on her gloves. Thus Amabel and Raymond found them – with things obviously very wrong. Amabel diagnosed an offer and a refusal, but Raymond thought there must be even more behind his sister's stormy brow and clouded eyes. The journey back was not cheerful.
Marie was indeed cut to the quick. Even to herself it was strange how deeply she was wounded. The Sarradets had never been ashamed of the shop; rather they had taken an honourable pride in it and in the growth of its fortunes from generation to generation. Yet Sidney Barslow's gibe about the counter was to her now unforgivable. It brought into coarse and vivid relief her secret doubts and fears. It made her ask whether she, having made a friend of the man who had used a taunt like that, must not have something about her to justify it. It set her on fire to put an utter end to her friendship and association with Sidney Barslow – and thereby to prove to herself that, whatever her manners might be they were at least too good for such company as his.
Hitherto pretty equally balanced between the two young men, or at all events wistfully anxious that friendship with Arthur should not make impossible her old and pleasant comradeship with Sidney – in whom she found so much that she liked – she became now Arthur's furious partisan. With him and his cause she identified herself. She declared that it was purely for his sake, and not at all in the interest of her own domination and authority, that she had rebuked Sidney, and for his sake solely that she had suffered insult. By a natural turn of feeling she asked in her heart for a reward from him, a recognition of her championship, gratitude to her for having preferred him to his would-be rival; if he were not at least a little pleased and proud, she would feel disappointment and humiliation.
But he would be. And why? Because that was the right thing for him to be, and now in her eyes, at this moment, he could do no wrong. Sidney was all wrong, therefore Arthur must be all right. She could not bring herself to doubt it. And, being all right, he must do and feel all the right things. So he would – when he knew what she had done and suffered for him. Her heart cried out that somehow (as delicately as possible, of course) he must be made to know, to know the full extent of her service and her sacrifice; he must know the insult she had received; and he must consider it as great and wanton an insult as she did.
So her feelings formulated their claim upon him, with an instinctive cunning. It was a claim to which no chivalrous-minded man could be insensible; it was one that would appeal with commanding force to Arthur Lisle's impulsive generosity.
"For you I have quarrelled with my old friend – for you I have endured insult." What could he answer save that in him she should find a better friend, that his appreciation should efface the insult?
"Don't be afraid to come. There will be nobody here that you don't like this time." With these words her next invitation to Arthur Lisle ended.
He read them with a quick grasp of her meaning – of the essential part of it at least. She was on his side! He was glad. Neither for his own sake, nor for the sake of the idea that he had of her, would he easily have endured that she should be on Sidney Barslow's side and against him. Although she did not know what he knew, and had not seen what he had seen, her instincts and her taste were right! He looked forward eagerly to letting her perceive, in some way or other, that he recognised this, to congratulating her somehow on it, to sealing the pact of a natural alliance between them. How he would do this, or how far he might seem to go in the course of doing it, or what further implications might be involved in such a bond between man and maid, his young blood and his generous impulses did not pause to ask. It was the thing to do – and he wanted to do it.
CHAPTER V
THE TENDER DIPLOMATIST
The coming of the Easter legal vacation set Arthur free for the time from professional hopes and fears. He was due on a visit to his mother and sister at Malvern, but excused himself at the last moment. It was not in him to leave London. The Temple indeed he forsook, but he abode in his lodgings and spent his spare time with the Sarradets. Amabel Osling was staying with them, and Raymond was now in close attendance on her. There were two young couples, then, ready for lawn-tennis, for theatres, for concerts, or any other diversion. Yet pleasantest of all were the walks in Regent's Park on the offdays, when nothing special had been arranged, but Arthur would happen to stroll up to the Broad Walk, and Marie would chance to be giving her dog a run. Then they would saunter about together, or sit on a seat in the spring sunshine, talking of all manner of things – well, except of the particular form which Sidney Barslow's rudeness had taken. Somehow, in the end, Marie never could bring herself to tell him that and ask him to be indignant about it. She left the enormity vague and undefined; it was really none the less effective left like that, just as provocative of reprobation for the sinner and sympathy for the ill-used friend. And it was safer to leave it like that; she could never rid herself of the fear that the actual thing, if revealed, might appear to Arthur rude indeed – rough, ill-mannered, as much of all this as one could conceive – but not so overwhelmingly absurd and monstrous as it ought to seem, as the demands of her uneasy heart required that he should find it.
For she could hardly believe in what looked now like coming to pass. She had known him for a long time – more than a year – as a good friend but rather a reserved one; cordial and kind, but