Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/189

Rh Madge wondered if already some tremor or agitation from them had just vibrated upwards to the shining surface.

"Dear Lucia," she said, "you are a brilliant, beautiful child. Just that. And a certain weird gift of doing the right thing in the right way is yours. Now do answer a question or two. I long to know about you just as much as you long to know about yourself. Supposing—supposing that funny old aunt of yours whom you told me about was dying and wanted to see you, and to see her you had to leave town at two-thirty, and there was going to be performed an unpublished opera of Wagner's in the evening, what would you do?"

Lucia laughed; the laugh already answered the question.

"Ah, that is a dreadful sort of question," she said, "and I don't see how it Oh, I should go, of course, and see her, and hurry back to town. There would be heaps of time."

"But if you could not get back?"

"Oh, Frau-confessorin!" said Lucia, hiding her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up again and shook her head.

"I shouldn't go," she said. "Isn't it awful? But I shouldn't. Would you, if you felt like me about Wagner?"

"Assuredly not. But then I know about the string of my necklace."

They had already finished lunch, and Lucia got up and took a big basket-chair next Lady Heron. She did not appear to notice the last remark; at least, her answer did not bear on it. She was looking quite grave, and a certain shrewdness and sharpness of expression had come into her face.

"But I know all that," she said. "I found out long ago that I was not kind, not soft-hearted. You see, if I want a thing, I want it very badly. I wonder if you would be shocked if I told you something. No, I don't think you would. Well, it is this: I knew quite well when Edgar and I met at Brixham that Maud, my best friend, you know, was a good deal attracted by him. But that seemed to me no reason why I should not—well, do what I could. So I did my best to make him want nie. I think it would have been foolish to do otherwise. I don't think it was mean; I think it was sensible. Maud saw it in the same light. She realized that I could not help myself."

Lady Heron could not help interrupting with a flash of a question.

"Since you, too, were in love with him?" she asked.

There was a slight pause.