Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/236

228 I thought a moment; first about that, then about something that presently made me say: 'Oh, well, if he brings it back!'

She continued to look at me. 'Do you mean you doubt his doing so?'

I thought again. 'You'll probably have a stiff time with him.'

She made, for a little, no answer to this but to sound me again with her eyes; our silence, however, was carried off by her then abruptly turning to her tea-tray and pouring me out a cup. 'Will you do me a favour?' she asked as I took it.

'Any favour in life.'

'Will you be present?'

'Present?'—I failed at first to imagine.

'When Mr. Beston comes.'

It was so much more than I had expected that I of course looked stupid in my surprise. 'This evening—here?'

'This evening—here. Do you think my request very strange?'

I pulled myself together. 'How can I tell when I'm so awfully in the dark?'

'In the dark?' She smiled at me as if I were a person who carried such lights!

'About the nature, I mean, of your friendship.'

'With Mr. Beston?' she broke in. Then in the wonderful way that women say such things: 'It has always been so pleasant.'

'Do you think it will be pleasant for me?' I laughed.

'Our friendship? I don't care whether it is or not!'

'I mean what you'll have out with him—for of course you will have it out. Do you think it will be pleasant for him?'

'To find you here—or to see you come in? I don't feel obliged to think. This is a matter in which I now care for no one but my brother—for nothing but his honour. I stand only on that.'