The Great God Success Part 17

"I would have returned long ago if I had not been ashamed," he answered, smiling. "I never thought that I should come not to care for as good shooting as that. You almost cost me my life."

"Yes?" Marian spoke absently. She was absorbed in her mental comparison of the two men.

"I got away from the others and was looking at your picture. They started up a lion and he came straight at me from behind. If he hadn't made a misstep in his hurry and loosened a stone, I guess he would have got me. As it was, I got him."

"You mean your gun got him."

"Of course. You don't suppose I tackled him bare-handed."

"It might have been fairer. I don't see how you can boast of having killed a creature that never bothered you, that you had to go thousands of miles out of your way to find, and that you attacked with a gun, giving him no chance to escape."

"What nonsense!" laughed Danvers. "I never expected to hear you say anything like that. Who's been putting such stuff into your head?"

Marian coloured. She did not like his tone. She resented the suggestion of the truth that her speech was borrowed. It made her uncomfortable to find herself thus unexpectedly on the dangerous ground.

"I suppose it must have been that newspaper fellow Mrs. Carnarvon has taken up. She talked about him for an hour after you left us to go to bed last night."

"Yes, it was--was Mr. Howard." Marian had recovered herself. "I want you to meet him some time. You'll like him, I'm sure."

"I doubt it. Mrs. Carnarvon seemed not to know much about him. I suppose he's more or less of an adventurer."

Marian wondered if this obvious dislike was the result of one of those strange instincts that sometimes enable men to scent danger before any sign of it appears.

"Perhaps he is an adventurer," she replied. "I'm sure I don't know. Why should one bother to find out about a pa.s.sing acquaintance? It is enough to know that he is amusing."

"I'm not so sure of that. He might make off with the jewels when you had your back turned."

As soon as she had made her jesting denial of her real lover Marian was ashamed of herself. And Danvers' remark, though a jest, cut her. "What I said about a pa.s.sing acquaintance was not just or true," she said impulsively and too warmly. "Mr. Howard is not an adventurer. I admire and like him very much indeed. I'm proud of his friends.h.i.+p."

Danvers shrugged his shoulders and looked at her suspiciously.

"You saw a good deal of this--this friend of yours?" he demanded, his mouth straightening into a dictatorial line.

At this Marian grew haughty and her eyes flashed: "Why do you ask?" she inquired, her tone dangerously calm.

"Because I have the right to know." He pointed to the diamond on her third finger.

"Oh--that is soon settled." Marian drew off the ring and held it out to him. "Really, Teddy, I think you ought to have waited a little longer before insisting so fiercely on your rights."

"Don't be absurd, Marian." Danvers did not take the ring but fixed his eyes upon her face and changed his tone to friendly remonstrance. "You know the ring doesn't mean anything. It's your promise that counts. And honestly don't you think your promise does give me the right to ask you about your new friends when you speak of them, of one of them, in--in such a way?"

"I don't intend to deceive you," she said, turning the ring around slowly on her finger. "I didn't know how to tell you. I suppose the only way to speak is just to speak."

"Do you think you are in love with this man, Marian?"

She nodded, then after a long pause, said, "Yes, Teddy, I love him."

"But I thought----"

"And so did I, Teddy. But he came, and I--well I couldn't help it."

As he did not speak, she looked at him. His face was haggard and white and in his eyes which met hers frankly there was suffering.

"It wasn't my fault, Teddy," Marian laid her hand on his arm, "at least, not altogether. I might have kept away and I didn't."

"Oh, I don't blame you. I blame him."

"But it wasn't his fault. I--I--encouraged him."

"Did he know that we were engaged?"

"Yes," reluctantly.

"The scoundrel! I suspected that he was rotten somewhere."

"You are unjust to him. I have not told you properly."

"Did he tell you that he cared for you?"

"Yes--but he didn't try to get me to break my engagement."

"So much the more a scoundrel, he. Tell me, Marian--come to your senses and tell me--what in the devil did he hang about you for and make love to you, if he didn't want to marry you? Would an honest man, a decent man, do that?"

Marian's face confessed a.s.sent.

"I should think you would have seen what sort of a fellow he is. I should think you would despise him."

"Sometimes it seems to me that I ought to. But I always end by despising myself--and--and--it makes no difference in the way I feel toward him."

"I think I would do well to look him up and give him a horse-whipping.

But you'll get over him, Marian. I am astonished at your cousin. How could she let this go on? But then, she's crazy about him too."

Marian smiled miserably. "I've owned up and you ought to congratulate yourself on so luckily getting rid of such an untrustworthy person as I."

"Getting rid of you?" Danvers looked at her defiantly. "Do you think I'm going to let you go on and ruin yourself on an impulse? Not much! I hold you to your promise. You'll come round all right after you've been away from this fellow for a few days. You'll be amazed at yourself a week from now."

"You don't understand, Teddy." Marian wished him to see once for all that, whatever might be the future for her and Howard, there was no future for her and him. "Don't make it so hard for me to tell you."

"I don't want to hear any more about it now, Marian. I can't stand it--I hardly know what I'm saying--wait a few days--let's go on as we have been--here they come."

The others of the party came bustling into the car and the train started. For the rest of the journey Danvers avoided her, keeping to the smoking room and the game of poker there. Marian could neither read nor watch the landscape. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry that she had told him. She hated to think that she had inflicted pain and she could not believe, in spite of what she had seen in his eyes, that his feeling in the matter was more than jealousy and wounded vanity.

"He doesn't really care for me," she thought. "It's his pride that is hurt. He will flare out at me and break it off. I do hope he'll get angry. It will make it so much easier for me."

Late in the afternoon she took Mrs. Carnarvon into her confidence. "I've told Teddy," she said.

"I might have known!" exclaimed her cousin. "What on earth made you do that?"