Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/318

 would have sent for us like this unless he meant to chuck up the sponge?"

"We mustn't build castles," she sighed, and the light fringed her eyelids.

"We'll build 'em as high as the moon!"

She shook a whimsical head. And then the goad of youth drove her to a smile of perilous happiness. All sorts of subtle fears were lurking in that good, shrewd brain of hers. They were on the verge of chaos and Old Night—yet she had not the heart to rebuke him.

The dread hour of one-thirty was now so very near, that it was idle to disguise the fact that one at least of the two people on the Park chairs had grown extremely unhappy. Mary was quite sure that a horrible ordeal was going to prove too much for her. It was hardly less than madness to have yielded in the way she had. But qualms were useless, fears were vain. There was only one thing to do. She must set her teeth and go and face the music.

II

Punctual to the minute they were at the solemn portals of Bridport House. And then as a servant in a grotesque livery piloted them across an expanse of rather pretentious hall into a somber room, full of grandiose decoration and Victorian furniture, a grand fighting spirit suddenly rose in one whose need of it was sore. Mary was quaking in her shoes, yet the joy of battle came upon her in the queerest, most unexpected way. It was as if a magician had waved his wand and all the paltry emotions of the past hour were dispelled. Perhaps it was that deep down in her slept an Amazon. Or a clear con