Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/232

224 'There is material, which I'd hoped you'd use. Miss Delavoy has lots of material. I don't know what she has told you, but I know what she has told me.' He hung fire but an instant. 'Quite lovely things.'

'And have you told her?'

'Told her what?' he asked as I paused.

'The lovely things you've just told me.'

Mr. Beston got up; folding the rest of my proof together, he made the final surrender with more dignity than I had looked for. 'You can do with this what you like.' Then as he reached the door with me: 'Do you suppose that I talk with Miss Delavoy on such subjects?' I answered that he could leave that to me—I shouldn't mind so doing; and I recall that before I quitted him something again passed between us on the question of her drawing. 'What we want,' he said, 'is just the really nice thing, the pleasant, right thing to go with it. That drawing's going to take!'

 V

minutes later I had wired to our young lady that, should I hear nothing from her to the contrary, I would come to her that evening. I had other affairs that kept me out; and on going home I found a word to the effect that though she should not be free after dinner she hoped for my presence at five o'clock: a notification betraying to me that the evening would, by arrangement, be Mr. Beston's hour and that she wished to see me first. At five o'clock I was there, and as soon as I entered the room I perceived two things. One of these was that she had been highly impatient; the other was that she had not heard, since my call on him, from Mr. Beston, and that her arrangement with him therefore dated from earlier. The tea-service was by the fire—she herself was at the window; and I am at a loss to name the particular revelation that I drew from this fact of her being restless on general grounds. My