Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/191

Rh perfectly conscious of the effect he produced of always reminding her that there was a subject between them. He was, on the other hand, probably not aware of the publicity that his manner struck his alert young friend as conferring on this circumstance, nor of the degree in which, as an illustration of his intensity about his own interests, his candour appeared to her comic. What was comic, on his part, was the excessive frankness—clever man though he was—of his assumption that he finely, quite disinterestedly, extended their subject by this very looking of volumes. She and her affairs figured in them all, and there was a set of several in a row by the time that, laughing in spite of herself, she now said to him: 'Will you take me a little walk?' He left her in no doubt of his alacrity, and in a moment Mrs. Gorton's visitor was in her chair and our couple away from the company and out in the open.

'I want you to know,' the girl immediately began, 'that I've said what I could for you—that I say it whenever I can. But I've asked you to speak to me now just because you mustn't be under any illusion or flatter yourself that I'm doing' she hesitated, for his attention had made her stop short—'well, what I'm not. I may as well tell you, at any rate,' she added, 'that I do maturely consider she cares for you. But what will you have? She's a woman of duty.'

'Duty? What do you mean by duty?'

Barton Reeve's irritation at this name had pierced the air with such a sound that Margaret Hamer looked about for a caution. But they were in an empty circle—a wide circle of smutty sheep. She showed a slight prevision of embarrassment—even of weariness: she had hoped for an absence of that. 'You know what I mean. What else is there to mean? I mean Colonel Despard.'

'Was it her duty to Colonel Despard to be as consciously charming to me as if there had been no such person alive? Has she explained to you that?' he demanded.