HOW TITA, RUNNING FROM THE ENEMY, SUDDENLY FINDS HERSELF FACE TO
FACE WITH ANOTHER FOE; AND HOW SHE FIGHTS A SECOND BATTLE, AND COMES
OFF VICTORIOUS!
Tita, once out of the sight of Maurice, had run home very quickly.
She knew that she was crying, and despised herself for so doing, but
could not check her tears. She was not sure what they meant, grief
or rage. Perhaps a little of both. All her guests were in the
garden, so she would not return to the house that way, though it was
much the nearest; but turning into a side path she made for a point
in the shrubberies, from which one could get to the armoury door
without being seen by anyone.
She is wrong in her calculations, however, for just as she steps
into the shrubbery walk, she finds herself face to face with Tom
Hescott.
_"Tita!_ You have been crying!" says he suddenly, after a devouring
glance at her small face, that indeed shows all the signs of woe.
"No, no!" cries Tita breathlessly.
She puts up her hands in protestation. She has grown crimson with
shame and vexation.
"You have," says Hescott, almost savagely. The knowledge that he is
leaving to-morrow (they are all leaving except the elder Lady
Rylton) has rendered him desperate, and made more difficult of
concealment the mad passion he entertains for her. "What has
happened?" he asks, going closer to her and letting his cigar drop
to the ground. "Are you unhappy? You," breathing quickly, "have been
unhappy for a long time!"
"And even so, am I the only person in the world who is unhappy? Are
you never unhappy?" demands Tita defiantly.
"God knows I am, _always!"_ says Hescott. "But you! That _you_
should be unhappy!"
"Never mind me," says Tita petulantly. "And I must say," with a
little flaming glance at him, "that it would have been in much
better taste if you--if you had pretended to see that I was _not_
crying."
Hescott does not hear, or takes no notice of this little bombshell.
"Has your husband been unkind to you?" asks he sharply, most
unpardonably.
Tita looks at him for a second as if he had struck her, and then
waves him aside imperiously.
"Maurice is never unkind to me," says she, "and even if he were, I
should not allow you or anyone to question me in the matter. What
are you thinking of?"
"Of you," slowly.
"You waste your time," says Tita.
"It is not wasted. It is spent on you," says Hescott, with
compressed but strong passion. "And now a last word, Tita. If ever
you want to--to----" He hesitates. "To leave him," he had almost
said, but her proud eyes and her pale lips made him hesitate--_such_
pride! It raises his love for her to fever-heat. "If ever you should
want anyone to help you, I----"
She interrupts him. She makes a haughty little gesture with hand. It
would be impossible to describe the wild grace and beauty of it--or
the dignity.
"If ever I should, I shall have Maurice!" says she coldly.
Hescott looks at her. Of course he has been told that old story
about Mrs. Bethune, and has seen for himself many things.
"You are an angel!" says he at last, very sadly; yet he would not
have wished her less than that.
"Don't be absurd!" says Tita most ungratefully.
She marches past him with her angry little head still upheld, but
presently a word from him brings her to a standstill.
"Don't be angry with me, Tita," he is saying in a low tone. "I'm
going away to-morrow."
"Ah, so you are!" says Tita. Her sweet nature comes back to her.
Dear old Tom! And she has been saying such horrid things to him.
"Never mind me, Tom!" says she, holding out her hand to him. "I'm
dreadfully cross sometimes, but I don't ever mean it, really. And,"
smiling gently at him, "you _know_ that I love you!"
Hescott takes her hand. His heart seems very full--too full for
words. Those words, "I love you!" He stoops and presses a kiss upon
the little warm fingers now resting within his own. And without
another word he leaves her.
He is hardly gone, when Rylton lays his hand upon her arm.
"Well," says he, his voice vibrating with anger. He had followed
her, as has been said, with no idea of watching her, but with a
curious longing to get near to her again. _Why,_ he could hardly
have explained even to himself. The only thing he did know in that
walk homeward was that he was most horribly, most unreasonably
unhappy!
He had followed her and he had found her crying, or at least with
the signs of tears upon her eyes, and had seen her cousin kissing
her hand. A slight madness came over him then. Crying for her
cousin, no doubt, because he must leave her to-morrow!
"Well!" His tone is abrupt, almost brutal. Yet even in this hour
where all things point to her discomfiture he cannot get the victory
over her.
"Well?" demands she in return, shaking her arm loose from his hold.
"You have been crying for him, no doubt--for your----" He pauses.
"My what?" asks Tita. She is looking at him with fearless, wondering
eyes.
"Your cousin," says Rylton, altering the phrase that would have made
it in his anger, "your lover."
"I have not been crying because of Tom," says Tita coldly, "though I
am very sorry he is going. He loves me, I _think."_
"Do you?" says Rylton. A sarcastic smile crosses his lips "And you?
Do you love him? No doubt cousins are charming possessions. And so I
find you crying because your dear possession is going, and because,
no doubt, you were confiding to him what a desperate monster a
husband can be."
There is hardly anything in his life afterwards that Rylton is so
ashamed of as this; even now in the heat of the terrible anger that
leads him so to forget himself, he cowers before the girl's eyes.
"Is that what people do in _your_ set?" says she coldly--icily. "In
the charmed circle within which your mother tells me I am not fit to
enter? If so, I am glad I do not belong to it. Set your mind at
ease, Maurice. I have not told Tom anything about you. I have not
even told him what a----" She pauses. A flash from her eyes enters
his. "I have told him nothing--nothing," says she, running past him
into the house.