The Profiteers Part 16

"Nowadays, that is youth," he declared confidently, "and youth means hope."

"Sometimes," she admitted a little listlessly, "I have dared to feel hope. I have felt it more than ever since you came. I don't know why, but there it is."

He turned his head and looked at her, appraisingly yet with reverence. No measure of despair could alter the fact that she was a very beautiful woman. Her slimness never lost its meed of elegance. The pallor of her cheeks, which might have seemed like an inheritance of fragility, was counteracted by the softness of her skin and the healthy colour of her curving lips. She bore his scrutiny so impersonally, with such sweet and challenging interest, that he persisted in it. Her brown hair was almost troublesome in its prodigality. There were little curls about her neck which defied restraint. Her cool muslin gown, even to his untutored perceptions, revealed a distinction which the first dressmaker in London had endorsed. She spoke the words of lifelessness, yet she possessed everything which men desire.

"The tragedy with you," he p.r.o.nounced, "is the absence of affection in your life."

"Do you think that I haven't the power for caring?" she asked quietly.

"I think that you have had no one to care for," he answered. "I think there has been no one to care for you in the way you wanted--but those days are over."

For the first time she showed some signs of that faint and growing uneasiness in his presence which brought with it a peculiar and nameless joy. Her eyes failed to meet the challenge of his. She glanced at the clock and changed the subject abruptly.

"Do you know that I have been here all this time," she reminded him, "and we have not said a word about our campaign."

"There is a great deal connected with it, or rather my side of it," he declared, "which I shall never tell you."

"You trust me?" she asked a little timidly, "You don't think that I should betray you to my husband?"

He laughed the idea to scorn.

"It isn't that," he a.s.sured her. "The machinery I have knocked into shape is crude in its way, but the lives and liberty of those underneath depend upon its workings."

"It sounds mysterious," she confessed.

"If you say that it is to be an alliance, Josephine," he decided, "it shall be. I need your help enormously, but you must make up your mind, before you say the last word, to run a certain measure of risk."

"What risk is there for me to run?" she asked, with a smile of confidence. "What measure of unhappiness could be crowded into my life which is not already there? I insist upon it--John--that you accept me as an ally without any more hesitation."

He bent and kissed her hands.

"This, then, is final," he said. "Within the next twenty-four hours you will be ready if necessary?"

"I am ready now--any time--always," she promised him.

CHAPTER XI

"My dears," Lady Amesbury said, as she stood surrounded by her guests on the hearth rug of her drawing-room, "you know what my Sunday night dinner parties are--all sorts and plenty of them, and never a dull man or a plain woman if I can help it. To-night I've got a new man. He's not much to look at, but they tell me he's a multimillionaire and making all the poor people of the country miserable. He's doing something about making bread dearer. I never did understand these things."

"Heavens, you don't mean Peter Phipps!" Sarah exclaimed.

"His very name," her aunt declared. "How did you guess it, my dear? Here he is. Be quiet, all of you, and watch Grover announce him. He's such a sn.o.b--Grover. He hates a Mister, anyhow, and 'Peter Phipps' will dislocate his tongue."

Lady Amesbury was disappointed. Grover had marched with the times, and the presence of a millionaire made itself felt. His announcement was sonorous and respectful. Mr. Peter Phipps made his bow to his hostess under completely auspicious circ.u.mstances.

"So kind of you not to forget, Mr. Phipps," she murmured. "My Sunday parties are always _viva voce_ invitations, and what between not remembering whom I've asked, and not knowing whether those I've asked will remember, I generally find it horribly difficult to arrange the places. We are all right tonight, though. Only two missing. Who are they, Sarah?"

"Josephine and Mr. Wingate," Sarah replied, with a covert glance at Phipps.

"Of course! And thank goodness, here they are! Together, too! If there's anything I love, it's to start one of my dinners with a scandal.

Josephine, did you bring Mr. Wingate or did he bring you?"

Josephine laughed. Then she saw Phipps standing in the background and she raised her voice a little.

"Mr. Wingate called for me," she explained. "Taxis are so scarce in our part of the world on Sunday nights, and when one does happen to know a man who makes enough money on Friday to buy a fleet of motor-cars on Sat.u.r.day--"

"My doing," Kendrick interrupted. "I'm his broker. Did you buy the Rolls-Royce, Wingate?"

"I brought it away with me, chauffeur and all."

"The most delightful car I ever rode in," Josephine p.r.o.nounced.

Phipps manoeuvred his way to her side. There was a frown on his forehead as he leaned towards her.

"So a Rolls-Royce is your favourite make of car, Lady Dredlinton,"

he remarked.

"Absolutely! I can't conceive of anything more comfortable. Mr. Wingate has promised to let me try it in the country next week."

"So my Wolseley is to be sc.r.a.pped?" Phipps asked, under his breath.

She looked at him pleasantly enough but with a dangerous light in her eyes.

"Have you a Wolseley?" she murmured. "Oh, yes, I remember! You offered to send it around to take me shopping."

"I sent it around three mornings," he replied. "You did not use it once.

You did not even open the note I left inside."

"I am not very fond of using other people's cars," she said.

"It need not be another person's car unless you like," he muttered.

She looked at him for a moment thoughtfully. Phipps was a man of bra.s.s, without sensitiveness or sensibility. Nevertheless, he flushed a little.

Just then dinner was announced and Lady Amesbury bustled once more into the midst of her guests.

"My dears," she told them all, "I've forgotten who takes anybody down!

Sc.r.a.p along as you are, and you'll find the cards in your places downstairs. Pick up any one you like. Not you, sir," she added, turning to Wingate. "You're going to take me. I want to hear all the latest New York gossip. And--lean down, please--are you really trying to flirt with Josephine Dredlinton? Don't disturb her unless you're in earnest. She's got a horrible husband."

"I admire Lady Dredlinton more than any woman I know," Wingate answered.

"One does not flirt with the woman one really cares for."

"Hoity-toity!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "That's the real divorce-court tone. There was a young man---I don't know how many years ago--who used to talk like that to me at the time Amesbury was Amba.s.sador at Madrid and took up with that Lola de Mendoza woman. Neither affair came to anything, though. Amesbury got tired of Spain, and my young man married a rich grocer's daughter. Still, I recognise the tone. Here we all are. Now you play a sort of hunt-the-slipper game, looking for your places, all of you. I know mine, thank G.o.d! Now let's pray to Heaven the soup's hot!

And don't any one talk to me while I'm eating it. The present generation are shocking soup eaters."