The Halo Part 36

She shook her head. "Oh, no. But I daresay I shall be with the Lenskys then. I can't go now, because one of the children is ill."

Tommy rose and looked at his watch, a shadow of his former proud manner settling on him as he put on his gloves. "She will be very much disappointed," he remarked, "but I don't see how she can forbid my coming here now, do you?"

"No, of course she can't. And oh, Tommy, I have missed you! Are you at Golden Square to-night?"

"Yes. Coming to supper?"

"I think so. Good-bye, you darling little boy."

After he had closed the door, Tommy pounded on it until she opened it.

"I say, Bicky, what happens to amba.s.sadors who fail in their missions?"

he asked, winking delightedly.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Yellow Dog Papillon lay asleep on the Chesterfield in Joyselle's room.

He was dreaming an enchanting dream about a particularly aromatic bone that he found in a dust-bin--a ham-bone slashed by a careless hand and cast away before all meat had been removed from it--a bone for which any dog would have risked much.

So it was tiresome to be awakened by a sound of low voices.

Opening one eye warily Yellow Dog Papillon looked up and saw something he had of late seen several times, his beloved master standing by the Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat.

The girl had water in her eyes, too.

"I am very sorry, Victor," she was saying, "but I cannot, and will not.

I can't see why you should care."

"But I do care. You know that I have always hated it. And Tommy told me himself that she let him go with the express purpose of making up with you. It is your duty to go back."

She drew away from him.

"I cannot."

"You mean you will not."

"Exactly; I will not."

Yellow Dog did not understand all of this dialogue, but he knew his master's face as well as his voice, and because he liked the Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat, he would have liked to advise her to lay down her arms at once. "No good opposing him when his eyes are like that," he said to himself; "if it was _me_, I'd just sit up and beg and make him laugh."

But Brigit would not condescend to sit up and beg.

"There's no use in discussing it," she said very coldly, "for I will not go back."

Joyselle watched her in silence for a long time. "Not even if I entreat you?" he asked in a gentle voice.

Her lips tightened, for tenderness with coercion behind it had no delusions for her.

"Not even if you entreat me. I have told you that I dislike my mother and I do not wish to see her. I will not tell you why, and that, at least, you ought to approve of."

"It is horrible for a daughter to say that she does not like her mother----"

"It is horrible for me not to like her, but I can't help it. And it is not horrible for me to tell--anything to you."

But his face did not soften. "I wish you to go to Kingsmead, Brigit."

"I will not go to Kingsmead, Victor."

"Then," his anger now finally blazed up, "I can say only--good-bye."

Her face was as white and as hard as his own, and being a woman she could even laugh.

"_Adieu, donc--Beau-pere!_"

"What do you mean by that? You will not--surely you cannot mean that you will----"

"But I do!" He himself had suggested a revenge to her. "If you and I quarrel, I will most certainly not marry your son."

For a moment the father in him dominated the mere man, and his eloquence was great as he reproached her.

"No--no, I am not cruel," she answered cruelly, her anger reinforced by a wave of jealousy anent Theo, "but as I do not love him, why should I marry him? And this kind of thing had far better cease. After all, you care for him far more than you care for me."

"_Grand Dieu!_"

"Yes, of course you do," she went on in the tone of gentle, unimpa.s.sioned reason that women sometimes use in violent anger, to the utter amazement and undoing of their male opponents. "And moreover, I daresay if I really loved you as much as I thought I did, I should be unable to refuse to do what you wish about my mother."

Joyselle's face was very white.

"What do you mean? Do you mean that your love for me was a mere caprice, and that--it has gone?"

His agony was unconcealed, and as she gazed she smiled, for her own torture was nearly unbearable.

"I shouldn't like to say it was only a caprice----" She hesitated, and he sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

Suddenly he rose and seizing her arm roughly, gave her another cue, which she remorselessly and instantly took.

"There is someone else," he cried, utterly forgetting that the very day before she had loved him madly, "you love some other man. Tell me who it is!"

And with the extraordinary fort.i.tude common to fanatics and furious women, she smiled and answered:

"Perhaps! _Tout pa.s.se, mon cher._"

It was a cheap and melodramatic bit of acting, and any unprejudiced onlooker must have seen the agony in her face, but Joyselle was blinded by his own pain and fled from the room without another word.

She heard a door slam and knew that he had gone out. And the world came to an end for her.