Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/194

186 Barton Reeve said it again—said it with rage and scorn. 'She's afraid, she's afraid!'

Margaret continued to look at him; then she turned away. 'Yes—she is.'

'Well, who wouldn't be?' came to her, as a reply, across the grass. Mrs. Gorton, with two gentlemen, now rejoined them.

 IV

hearing from Mrs. Despard that she must see him, Philip Mackern's action was immediate: she had named the morrow for his call, but he knocked at her door, on the chance, an hour after reading her note. The footman demurred, but at the same moment Barton Reeve, taking his departure, appeared in the hall, and Mackern instantly appealed to him.

'She is at home, I judge—isn't she?' The young man was so impatient that it was only afterwards he took into account a queerness of look on Reeve's part—a queerness that seemed to speak of a different crisis and that indeed something in his own face might, to his friend's eyes, remarkably have matched. Like two uneasy Englishmen, at any rate, they somehow passed each other, and when, a minute later, in the drawing-room, Mrs. Despard, who, with her back presented, was at the window, turned about at the sound of his name, she showed him an expression in which nothing corresponded to that of her other visitor. It may promptly be mentioned that, even through what followed, this visitor's presence was, to Mackern's sense, still in the air; only it was also just one of the things ministering, for our friend, to the interest of retrospect that such a fact—the fact that Mrs. Despard could be so 'wonderful'—conveyed a reminder of the superior organisation of women. 'I know you said to-morrow,' he quickly began; 'but I'll come to-morrow too. Is it bad or good?' he went on—'I mean what you have to tell me. Even if I just know it's bad, I believe I can wait—if you haven't time now.' 