Chapter XIII

Nearly three weeks had passed since the night of Lady Diana Tuffnell's dance; and Clodagh was once more occupying her London flat.

The season was long since dead; the fashionable world had betaken itself to its customary haunts; London had, in the eyes of society, become intolerable; and yet it seemed to her, as she woke each morning and looked across the park, lying under a haze of heat, that she had never known the great city until now; that she had never experienced the exhilaration that can lie in its crowded, strenuous life until now, when her own existence--her own soul seemed lifted above it on the wings of happiness.

The hours, the days, the weeks that had followed the night of Lady Diana's dance had been a chain of golden dreams, linked one to the other. From the moment that Gore had made his confession, the face of the world had altered for her. One overwhelming fact had coloured the universe. The fact that he loved--that he needed her.

They had entered into no lucid explanations in the moments that had followed the confession; for men and women in love have no need of such mundane things. With the glorious egotism of nature, they are content with the primitive consciousness that each lives and is close to the other.

Clodagh had, it is true, made some faint and deprecating allusion to the past--to Gore's first disapproval, and subsequent avoidance of her. And he had paused in his flow of talk and looked at her with sudden seriousness.

"I have never disapproved of you," he had said. "I have never felt it was my place to disapprove."

"But you have avoided me?"

"Never intentionally. I have watched you; I have studied you, since we have been here together."

"And what have you seen?"

Clodagh had remembered the card-room and Serracauld--the rose garden and Deerehurst--with a quick, faint sense of fear.

But Gore had taken her hand and, with quiet courtesy, had raised it to his lips.

"I have seen--or believe I have seen--that though you may like these people, may be amused by them, may even court them, not one of them is more to you now than they were in Venice. That is what I believe. Am I right?"

And Clodagh--in sudden relief, in sudden gratitude for his faith--had caught his hand passionately between her own, and looked up confidently into his face.

"You are right!" she had cried. "Oh, you are right! They are nothing to me! Nothing!--nothing!"

And Gore, moved by her vehemence, had leant forward and looked deeply into the eyes that challenged his.

"Not one of them is anything to you--in any way?"

"Not one of them is anything to me--in any way."

That had been the only moment of personal doubt or question that had obtruded itself upon the first hours of mutual comprehension. Until more than half the programme had been danced through, and the older guests had begun to depart, they had walked together up and down the solitary paths of the old garden upon which the music-room opened--a garden where thyme and lavender and a hundred other sweet-smelling plants bordered the prim flower-beds and recalled by their scents the days when the harpsichord had tinkled out across the silence of the night. As they paced slowly to and fro, they had made many confessions, sweet in the confessing, of thoughts and desires and doubts felt by each--when each had believed the other out of reach; and quietly, hesitatingly, eagerly they had touched upon the future, upon the days when Clodagh's mourning should be over and they could permit the world to share their secret--upon the days, still later, when their lives should no longer be separate things, but one perfect whole.

Gore was an unusual, and a very delightful lover. The slight suggestion of reticence that marked him in ordinary life clung to him even in these intimate moments. He gave the impression that behind his extreme quiet, his almost gentle deference of manner, lay reserves of feeling, of dignity, of strength that he himself had, perhaps, never fathomed.

And for this very reserve--this courtliness--this indescribable fineness of bearing, Clodagh felt her own nature leap forth in renewed admiration.

At last, at one o'clock, they had parted, he to smoke and pace the garden paths until the early summer dawn broke over the woods; she to wait by the open window of Nance's bedroom, with her face buried in her hands, her whole being alive and tingling with the tumult, the excitement of the joy that had come to her.

At six o'clock next morning, before any member of the house party was awake, Gore had made his way to the stables; and a few minutes later had emerged, leading two saddled horses. In the drive he had been joined by Clodagh, dressed in her riding habit, and fresh and buoyant as on the first morning when she had ridden alone through the great gates, and had dreamed of his coming to Tuffnell.

No companionship can be more delightful than that of two people wholly occupied with each other, who ride together on a summer morning. To Clodagh, the frank happiness of that stolen ride--the intoxicating sense of reality conveyed by Gore's glance, as she met it in the searching sunlight, had been things that possessed no parallel. Her natural, spontaneous capacity for joy had wakened within her like a flood of light. The misgivings--the dark hours--the feverish artificiality of the past months had been dispersed as if by magic. She had become as a child who, by the fervour of its own delight, sheds delight upon all around.

And so it had been with the days that had elapsed before their departure from Buckinghamshire. They had met as often as chance would permit; but, with the exception of the first stolen ride, they had arranged no more secret meetings. And to Clodagh the half-furtive, ever-expectant existence had been fraught with new pleasure. To talk and laugh with others, to watch Gore do likewise, and all the while to know that, unseen by any eyes, unsuspected by those around them, their lives were linked together--their thoughts belonged to each other--was a source of intense excitement, of unending joy.

To Nance alone did she confide her secret; and here lay another source of happiness. For every night, when the house party had retired, when Simonetta had been dismissed, and the house given over to the great sheltering stillness of the country, the sisters had exchanged such confidences as all women love--talking of their hopes, their fears, their pasts, their futures, in the half-reluctant, half-eager confessions that the dark suggests.

Then at last these days of mystery and possibility had come to an end. Gore had received a letter from his mother asking him to join her in Scotland; and almost at the same hour had come a cablegram from Pierce Estcoit saying that he, with his mother and sister, had sailed for England a fortnight earlier than they had at first intended.

So bidding good-bye to the Tuffnells, to her fellow guests, and to Gore, Clodagh had returned to London. And now, a fortnight later, she and Nance were driving homeward through the park in the warmth of an early afternoon.

The morning had been devoted to the preparation of Nance's trousseau--a matter which, in these days, claimed absorbed attention; and, later, the sisters had lunched together at one of the restaurants.

The day--or at least the earlier portion of it--had been a complete success. But now, as Clodagh's motor car sped along under the canopy of trees, already whitened with summer dust, a cloud seemed to have fallen upon the sisters' gaiety. Clodagh lay back in her corner, looking straight in front of her; Nance sat stiffly upright, her face flushed, her head held at an aggressive angle.

At last, unable to maintain the silence longer, she turned and looked at her sister.

"It--it seems to me so stupid!" she said.

Clodagh took up a parasol that lay beside her, and opened it with a little jerk.

"Was it my fault that he lunched at 'Prince's'? Was it my fault that he sat at the table next to ours? You know perfectly well that I don't care where he lunches--or whether he ever lunches----"

Nance maintained her rigid attitude.

"I wonder if he is of that opinion," she said dryly.

Clodagh flushed suddenly.

"It is you who are being stupid! Lord Deerehurst is one of my best friends. It's impossible to treat him rudely when we chance to meet."

Nance gave a little angry laugh.

"When you chance to meet!" she repeated with immense scorn. Then she turned afresh and looked at her sister. "Do you think engaged people ought to have best friends? I wonder what Pierce would say if I were to get flowers and books and things every day----"

Clodagh shut her parasol sharply.

"How can you, Nance! Books and flowers and things everyday! Four times Lord Deerehurst has sent me flowers since we came back to town."

"And how many times has he written to you? And how many times has he called? And why did he come back to town from Tuffnell, instead of going to France with Mr. Serracauld?"

Clodagh looked away across the park.

"He had business in town."

"Business! Was it business that brought him to the flat at nine o'clock the second day after we arrived--and that made you ride with him? Oh, Clo, I wonder, when you think of Walter, that you're--you're not ashamed!" She brought the last word forth with a little gasp.

For a moment Clodagh's face was suffused with red.

"I do not need anybody to tell me how I should care for Walter," she said, after a moment's pause.

At the low, hurt tone, Nance's antagonistic attitude suddenly deserted her. The expression of her face changed, her figure unbent.

"Clo! Clo! I was a wretch!--I was a wretch! Forgive me! It's only that, knowing Walter is coming back to-morrow, knowing that he hates Lord Deerehurst, and seeing you allow him to go everywhere that you go---- Oh, Clo, I can't properly explain, but sometimes I have felt--afraid. Walter is so--so honourable himself."

Clodagh put out her hand and laid it for a moment upon her sister's.

"When one loves like I do, Nance," she said, "one simply doesn't _see_ anybody but the person that one cares for. Other people don't count--other people don't exist!"

Nance looked down at the hand still resting upon her own.

"Perhaps not," she said wisely, "but the point is that the person one cares for may not be quite so blind."

Clodagh withdrew her hand.

"You mean that Walter might imagine--you mean that Walter might be _jealous_ of Lord Deerehurst?"

"I do mean that."

With a sudden gesture of amusement, Clodagh threw up her head and laughed. Then almost as suddenly her face became grave.

"Nance!" she said in a new voice.

Very sharply Nance turned.

"Yes?"

But Clodagh's mood had veered once more.

"Nothing, darling!" she said--"nothing! Here we are at home! Aren't you longing for a nice, cool room and a cup of tea?"