Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/190

182 Mrs. Despard waited; she watched, over the gate, the gambols, in the next field, of a small white lamb. 'Will you kindly let me pass?' she then asked.

But he went on as if he had not heard her. 'It's to make up to him for what she has cost him. It's simply to do everything.'

Mrs. Despard hesitated. 'Everything?' she then vaguely asked.

'Everything,' Mackern said as he opened the gate. 'Won't you help me?' he added more appealingly as they got into the next field.

'No.' She was as distinct as himself. She followed with her eyes the little white lamb. She dismissed the subject. 'You're simply wicked.'

 III

, of a Sunday, sometimes went for luncheon to his sister, who lived in Great Cumberland Place, and this particular Sunday was so fine that, from the Buckingham Palace Road, he walked across the Park. There, in the eastern quarter, he encountered many persons who appeared, on the return from church, to have assembled to meet each other and who had either disposed themselves on penny chairs or were passing to and fro near the Park Lane palings. The sitters looked at the walkers, the walkers at the sitters, and Barton Reeve, with his sharp eyes, at every one. Thus it was that he presently perceived, under a spreading tree, Miss Hamer and her sister, who, however, though in possession of chairs, were not otherwise engaged. He went straight up to them, and, while he stood talking, they were approached by another friend, an elderly intimate, as it seemed, of Mrs. Gorton's, whom he recognised as one of the persons so trying to his patience the day of his long wait in her drawing-room. Barton Reeve looked very hard at the younger lady, and was