Page:Across the Stream.djvu/209

Rh nice of me to laugh. I take back the laugh. Poor old Bradshaw! Did he mind much?"

Helena looked at him, still standing close to him, smiling and in silence. She really found him most attractive at that moment, and she wondered with how changed a face he would presently look at her.

"Yes, he proposed to me this afternoon," she said, still smiling, and still looking at him.

"Well, poor old Bradshaw!" said Archie once more. But he did not say it with quite the same confidence.

She laid her hand, that soft hand with sheathed claws, on his arm.

"Archie, aren't you going to wish me happiness?" she asked.

The lines of his laughter still lingered on his handsome mouth, but now they were merely stamped there and meant nothing.

"Wish you happiness?" he rapped out in a hard, snappish voice.

"Yes: isn't it usual between friends?"

"Do you mean you've accepted him?" he asked.

"Yes, my dear. Haven't I told you?"

"Is it a joke?" he asked. "Shall I laugh?"

Helena moved a little away from him, and rang the bell. Archie looked so strange. She had expected something far more moving and dramatic than this wooden immobility.

"Tell Colonel Vautier and Miss Jessie that Lord Davidstow has come," she said to the parlour-maid.

Archie said nothing till the door had closed again. He felt that he was made of wood, that everything was made of wood, he and Helena and the roses he had sent, and the Persian rug on which he stood. And when he spoke, it was as if a machine in his mouth said the words which had nothing whatever to do with him.

"I congratulate you," he said. "I hope you will be very happy."