The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton Part 22

Burton shook his head.

"Please don't think of it," he begged. "It would completely upset me.

I should not be able to do another stroke of work."

"You and your work!" Edith murmured, looking down at him. "What about me? What is the use of being engaged if I may not have my fiance come and see me sometimes?"

"You don't want him," Burton declared, confidently.

"But I do," she insisted, "if only to stop your making love to me."

"I do not make love to you," he a.s.serted. "I am in love with you.

There is a difference."

"But you ought not to be in love with me--you have a wife," she reminded him.

"A wife who lives at Garden Green does not count," he a.s.sured her.

"Besides, it was the other fellow who married her. She isn't really my wife at all. It would be most improper of me to pretend that she was."

"You are much too complicated a person to live in the same house with,"

she sighed. "I shall do as I said. I shall ask Mr. Bomford down for the week-end."

"Then I shall go back to London," he p.r.o.nounced, firmly.

A shadow fell across the gra.s.s.

"What's that--what's that?" the professor demanded, anxiously.

They both looked up quickly. The professor had just put in one of his unexpected appearances. He had a habit of shuffling about in felt slippers which were altogether inaudible.

"Miss Edith was speaking of asking a visitor--a Mr. Bomford--down for the week-end," Burton explained suavely. "I somehow felt that I should not like him. In any case, I have been here for a week and I really ought--"

"Edith will do nothing of the sort," the professor declared, sharply.

"Do you hear that, Edith? No one is to be asked here at all. Mr.

Burton's convenience is to be consulted before any one's."

She yawned and made a face at Burton.

"Very well, father," she replied meekly, "only I might just as well not be engaged at all."

"Just as well!" the professor snapped. "Such rubbis.h.!.+"

Edith swung herself upright in the hammock, arranged her skirts, and faced her father indignantly.

"How horrid of you!" she exclaimed. "You know that I only got engaged to please you, because you thought that Mr. Bomford would take more interest in publis.h.i.+ng your books. If I can't ever have him here, I shall break it off. He expects to be asked--I am quite sure he does."

The professor frowned impatiently.

"You are a most unreasonable child," he declared. "Mr. Bomford may probably pay us a pa.s.sing visit at any time, and you must be content with that."

Edith sighed. She contemplated the tips of her shoes for some moments.

"I do seem to be in trouble to-day," she remarked,--"first with Mr.

Burton and then with you."

The professor turned unsympathetically away.

"You know perfectly well how to keep out of it," he said, making his way toward the house.

"Between you both," Edith continued, "I really am having rather a hard time. This is the last straw of all. I am deprived of my young man now, just to please you."

"He isn't a young man," Burton contradicted.

Edith clasped her hands behind her head and looked fixedly up at the blue sky.

"Never mind his age," she murmured. "He is really very nice."

"I've seen his photograph in the drawing-room," Burton reminded her.

Edith frowned.

"He is really much better looking than that," she said with emphasis.

"It is perhaps as well," Burton retorted, "especially if he is in the habit of going about unattended."

Edith ignored his last speech altogether. "Mr. Bomford is also," she went on, "extremely pleasant and remarkably well-read. His manners are charming."

"I am sorry you are missing him so much," Burton said.

"A girl," Edith declared, with her head in the air, "naturally misses the small attentions to which she is accustomed from her fiance."

"If there is anything an unworthy subst.i.tute can do," Burton began,--

"Nice girls do not accept subst.i.tutes for their fiances," Edith interrupted, ruthlessly. "I am a very nice girl indeed. I think that you are very lazy this afternoon. You would be better employed at work than in talking nonsense."

Burton sighed.

"I tried to work this morning," he declared. "I gave up simply because I found myself thinking of you all the time. Genius is so susceptible to diversions. This afternoon I couldn't settle down because I was wondering all the time whether you were wearing blue linen or white muslin. I just looked out of the window to see--you were asleep in the hammock . . . you witch!" he murmured softly. "How could I keep sane and collected! How could I write about anybody or anything in the world except you! The wind was blowing those little strands of hair over your face. Your left arm was hanging down--so; why is an arm such a graceful thing, I wonder? Your left knee was drawn up--you had been supporting a book against it and--"

"I don't want to hear another word," Edith protested quickly.

He sighed.

"It took me about thirty seconds to get down," he murmured. "You hadn't moved."

"Shall we have tea out here or in the study?" Edith asked.

"Anywhere so long as we escape from this," Burton replied, gazing across the lawn. "What is it?"

A man was making his way from the house towards them, a man who certainly presented a somewhat singular appearance. He was wearing a long linen duster, a motor-cap which came over his ears, and a pair of goggles which he was busy removing. Edith swung herself on to her feet.