Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/404

 willing on his side to do anything to bring it back seemed to him reason enough for its restoration. That the whole matter was composed of the most delicate and intricate threads never occurred to him for an instant. Clare had loved him once. Clare would love him again—and the sooner it happened the better for him.

Meanwhile Mrs. Rossiter being enemy rather than ally there remained Cards.

But Cards was strange. Peter could never claim to have been intimate with him—their relationship had been founded on an inequality, on a recognition from Peter of Cards' superiority. Cards had always laughed at Peter, always patronised him. But now, although Cards had been in the place so much of late, the distance seemed farther than ever before.

Cards was as kind as he could be—always in good spirits, always ready to do anything, but Peter noticed that it was only when Clare was present that Cards changed from jest to earnest. “He thinks Clare worth talking to seriously. I suppose it's because he was at Dawson's but after all I'm not an imbecile.”

This attitude of Cards was in fact as vague and nebulous as all the other things that seemed now to stand between Peter and Clare.

Peter tried to talk to Cards—he was always prevented—held off with a laughing hand.

“What's the matter with me?” thought Peter, “What have I done? It's like being out in a fog.”

At last one evening, after dinner, when Clare and Mrs. Rossiter had gone upstairs he demanded an answer.

“Look here, Cards, what have I done? You profess to be a friend of mine. Tell me what crime I've committed?”

Cards' eyes had been laughing. Suddenly he was serious. His dark, clean-cut face was stern, almost accusing.

“Profess, Peter? I hope you don't doubt it?”

“No, of course not. You know you're the best friend I've got. Tell me—what have I done?”

“Done?”

“Yes—you and Clare and her mother—all of you keep me at arms' length—why?”