Claire"s eyes opened wide.

"I thought you loved me." She came closer. She pulled at his sleeve. Her voice took on a note of soft raillery. "Don"t be absurd, Bill! You mustn"t behave like a sulky schoolboy. It isn"t like you, this. You surely don"t want me to humble myself more than I have done." She gave a little laugh. "Why, Bill, I"m proposing to you! I know I"ve treated you badly, but I"ve explained why. You must be just enough to see that it wasn"t altogether my fault. I"m only human. And if I made a mistake I"ve done all I can do to undo it. I-"

"Claire, listen: I"m engaged!"

She fell back. For the first time the sense of defeat came to her. She had antic.i.p.ated many things. She had looked for difficulties. But she had not expected this. A feeling of cold fury surged over her at the way fate had tricked her. She had gambled recklessly on her power of fascination, and she had lost.

Mr Pickering, at that moment brooding in solitude in the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby"s house, would have been relieved could he have known how wistfully she was thinking of him.

"You"re engaged?"

"Yes."

"Well!" She forced another laugh. "How very-rapid of you! To whom?"

"To Elizabeth Boyd."

"I"m afraid I"m very ignorant, but who is Elizabeth Boyd? The ornate lady you were dancing with at the restaurant?"

"No!"

"Who then?"

"She is old Ira Nutcombe"s niece. The money ought to have been left to her. That was why I came over to America, to see if I could do anything for her."

"And you"re going to marry her? How very romantic-and convenient!

What an excellent arrangement for her. Which of you suggested it?"

Bill drew in a deep breath. All this was, he supposed, unavoidable, but it was not pleasant.

Claire suddenly abandoned her pose of cool amus.e.m.e.nt. The fire behind it blazed through.

"You fool!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "Are you blind? Can"t you see that this girl is simply after your money? A child could see it."

Bill looked at her steadily.

"You"re quite wrong. She doesn"t know who I am."

"Doesn"t know who you are? What do you mean? She must know by this time that her uncle left his money to you."

"But she doesn"t know that I am Lord Dawlish. I came to America under another name. She knows me as Chalmers."

Claire was silent for a moment.

"How did you get to know her?" she asked, more quietly.

"I met her brother by chance in New York."

"By chance!"

"Quite by chance. A man I knew in England lent me his rooms in New York. He happened to be a friend of Boyd"s. Boyd came to call on him one night, and found me."

"Odd! Had your mutual friend been away from New York long?"

"Some months."

"And in all that time Mr Boyd had not discovered that he had left.

They must have been great friends! What happened then?"

"Boyd invited me down here."

"Down here?"

"They live in this house."

"Is Miss Boyd the girl who keeps the bee-farm?"

"She is."

Claire"s eyes suddenly lit up. She began to speak in a louder voice:

"Bill, you"re an infant, a perfect infant! Of course, she"s after your money. Do you really imagine for one instant that this Elizabeth Boyd of yours and her brother don"t know as well as I do that you are really Lord Dawlish? I always thought you had a trustful nature! You tell me the brother met you by chance. Chance! And invited you down here. I bet he did! He knew his business! And now you"re going to marry the girl so that they will get the money after all! Splendid! Oh, Bill, you"re a wonderful, wonderful creature! Your innocence is touching."

She swung round.

"Good night," she called over her shoulder.

He could hear her laughing as she went down the road.

20

In the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby"s house, chewing the dead stump of a once imposing cigar, Dudley Pickering sat alone with his thoughts. He had been alone for half an hour now. Once Lord Wetherby had looked in, to withdraw at once coldly, with the expression of a groom who has found loathsome things in the harness-room. Roscoe Sherriff, good, easy man, who could never dislike people, no matter what they had done, had come for a while to bear him company; but Mr Pickering"s society was not for the time being entertaining. He had answered with grunts the Press-agent"s kindly attempts at conversation, and the latter Had withdrawn to seek a more congenial audience. And now Mr Pickering was alone, talking things over with his subconscious self.

A man"s subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. Mr Pickering"s rare interviews with his subconscious self had happened until now almost entirely in the small hours of the night, when it had popped out to remind him, as he lay sleepless, that all flesh was gra.s.s and that he was not getting any younger. To-night, such had been the shock of the evening"s events, it came to him at a time which was usually his happiest-the time that lay between dinner and bed. Mr Pickering at that point of the day was generally feeling his best. But to-night was different from the other nights of his life.

One may picture Subconscious Self as a withered, cynical, malicious person standing before Mr Pickering and regarding him with an evil smile. There has been a pause, and now Subconscious Self speaks again:

"You will have to leave to-morrow. Couldn"t possibly stop on after what"s happened. Now you see what comes of behaving like a boy."

Mr Pickering writhed.

"Made a pretty considerable fool of yourself, didn"t you, with your revolvers and your hidings and your trailings? Too old for that sort of thing, you know. You"re getting on. Probably have a touch of lumbago to-morrow. You must remember you aren"t a youngster. Got to take care of yourself. Next time you feel an impulse to hide in shrubberies and take moonlight walks through damp woods, perhaps you will listen to me."

Mr Pickering relit the stump of his cigar defiantly and smoked in long gulps for a while. He was trying to persuade himself that all this was untrue, but it was not easy. The cigar became uncomfortably hot, and he threw it away. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a diamond ring, at which he looked pensively.

"A pretty thing, is it not?" said Subconscious Self

Mr Pickering sighed. That moment when Claire had thrown the ring at his feet and swept out of his life like an offended queen had been the culminating blow of a night of blows, the knock-out following on a series of minor punches. Subconscious Self seized the opportunity to become offensive again.

"You"ve lost her, all through your own silly fault," it said. "How on earth you can have been such a perfect fool beats me. Running round with a gun like a boy of fourteen! Well, it"s done now and it can"t be mended. Countermand the order for cake, send a wire putting off the wedding, dismiss the bridesmaids, tell the organist he can stop practising "The Voice that Breathed O"er Eden"-no wedding-bells for you! For Dudley Damfool Pickering, Esquire, the lonely hearth for evermore! Little feet pattering about the house? Not on your life! Childish voices sticking up the old man for half a dollar to buy candy? No, sir! Not for D. Bonehead Pickering, the amateur trailing arbutus!"