Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/409

 “I'm Cornish too,” said Peter, “it's got a good deal to do with us. You needn't tell me of course—but what part do you come from?”

Still sullenly she said: “Almost forgotten the name of it, so long ago. You wouldn't know it anyway, it's such a little place. They called it Portergwarra—”

“I know,” cried Peter, “near the Land's End. Of course I know it. There are holes in the rocks that they lift the boats through. There's a post-box on the wall. I've walked there many a time—”

“Well, stow it, old man,” Miss Bennett answered decisively. “I'm not thinking of that place any more and I don't suppose they've thought of me since. Why, it's years—”

She broke off and began hurriedly to drink. Peter's eyes sought her eyes—his eyes were miserable and so were hers—but her mouth was hard and laughing.

“It's funny talking of Cornwall,” she said at last. “No one's spoken of the place since I came up here. But it's, all right, I tell you—quite all right. You take it from me, chucky. I enjoy my life—have a jolly time. There's disadvantages in every profession, and when you've got a bit of a cold as I have now why—”

She stopped. Her eyes sought Peter's. He saw that she was nearly crying.

“Talking of Cornwall and all that,” she muttered, “silly rot! I'm tired—I'm going home.”

He paid for the drinks and got a hansom.

At that moment as he stood looking over the horse into the dimly-lit obscurities of the Square he thought with a sudden beating of the heart that he recognised Cardillac looking at him from the doorway of a neighbouring restaurant. Then the figure was gone. He had got Cardillac on the brain! Nevertheless the suggestion made him suddenly conscious of poor Miss Bennett's enormous hat, her rouge, her soiled finery that allowed no question as to her position in the world.

Rather hurriedly he asked her to get into the cab.

“Come that far—” she said.

He got in with her and she took off one glove and he held her hand and they didn't speak all the way.