Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/121

Rh Lucia had got up to shake hands with him. Then, still embarrassed, she suddenly burst into a peal of laughter.

"Somehow, by your mistake or mine," she said, "and it doesn't really matter whose it is, the most awful thing has happened that ever happened. No doubt it was mine, but I thought I suggested Friday. And to-day, Thursday, the state of affairs is this: We were all going on a picnic to Trew this morning, and I had a headache—but a headache—and the others, all of them, went without me. I lay in bed all morning; felt better, and came on to the beach."

Lucia seemed to abandon herself to these embarrassing reflections for a moment; then she pulled herself together, and entirely cast them off.

"But supposing I hadn't had a headache, supposing I had gone with the others, it would have been even worse. You would have come here and found nobody at all. What would you have thought of me?"

"That you had made a mistake merely," he said. "But I should have been very sorry for the results of that mistake."

He laid just the faintest stress on "that," enough to make the inference clear.

She burst out with sudden delicious laughter again. "I think it would kill Aunt Elizabeth if she knew," she faltered between her ripples of laughter. "She would die of the infamy of it. So we must never say you have been. But let us settle whose mistake it was; I promise to forgive you if it proves to be yours, and you must try to forgive me if it has been mine. Surely I said Friday. Ah! your engagement book is no evidence; you may have put it down wrong."

In point of fact, he had taken his engagement book out of his pocket. But that was only to expedite his search, and immediately he produced Lucia's note to him. There was Thursday, as plain as need be.

"Condemned!" she said, "without any recommendation to mercy. But I am so sorry, Lord Brayton. Let me say that once for all. I don't desire, anyhow, to wriggle out of it. Besides, there is no way of escape. Now be kind, please. No; I know what you are thinking of—there isn't a train back before the six something, and even if there was it would be very rude of you to go by it."

Lucia's swift mind made a sudden excursion round all the angles of her scheme. All were safe except one. She must