Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/294

 attempts on my part to show you one another.”

But Peter had not been listening.

“Do you really think,” he muttered, “that she cares about me?”

Bobby looked at him, laughed and shrugged his shoulders in despair.

“Ah! I see—it's no use,” he said, “poor dear Peter—well, I wish you luck!”

And that was the end as far as Alice and Bobby were concerned. They never alluded to it again and indeed now seemed to favour meetings between Clare and Peter.

And now, through these wonderful Spring weeks, these two were continually together. The Galleons had, at first, been inclined to consider Clare's obvious preference for Peter as the simplest desire to be part of a general rather heady enthusiasm. “Clare loves little movements” And Peter, throughout this Spring was a little movement. The weeks went on, and Clare was not herself—silent, absorbed, almost morose. One day she asked Alice Galleon a number of questions about Peter, and, after that, resolutely avoided speaking of him. “Of course,” Alice said to Bobby—“Dr. Rossiter will let her marry any one she likes. She'll have plenty of money and Peter's going to have a great career. After all it may be the best thing.”

Bobby shook his head. “They're both egoists,” he said. “Peter because he's never had anything he wanted and Clare because she's always had everything it won't do.”

But, after ail, when May gave place to burning June. Bobby and Alice were inevitably drawn into that romance. They yielded to an atmosphere that both, by temperament, were too sentimental to resist.

Nearer and nearer was coming that intoxicating moment of Peter's final plunge, and Clare—beautiful, these weeks, with all the excitement of the wonderful episode—saw him as a young god who had leapt upon a submissive London and conquered it.

Mrs. Rossiter and Mrs. Galleon played waiting chorus. Mrs. Launce from her little house in Westminster, was, as usual, glowing with a piece of other people's happiness. Bobby and Alice had surrendered to the atmosphere. All