A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.
[Illustration: "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."]
It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after
Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first
visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did not mind
accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as if
she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan, who
finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her father to
embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies. However, things
turned out not so bad as they might have been, a little was saved from
the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in the person of Everard G.
Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence, if not of the luxury she had
been entitled to expect. She had a good deal of affection for Everard,
who was unmistakably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The
prospect seemed fair and cloudless. Nothing presaged the terrible storm
that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a
moment come to vex their mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon.
The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness,
seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness
that had once seemed blighted.
Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as
much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the
appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the
passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and
his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and
informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked me to
come to tea."
"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.
"Yes, I am Miss Newell."
"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly to
congratulate him on his choice till now."
Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his
admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first
tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his
impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has often
spoken to me of you."
"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices. That
accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."
She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard ascribes to
you all the virtues," she said.
"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But won't
you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not break an
appointment with _you_." The admiration latent in the accentuation of
the last pronoun was almost offensive.
She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and would
punish him by going away indignantly.
"Do let _me_ give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must be awfully
thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain with you! If
you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment Everard returns,
and not spoil your _tête-à-tête_." But Clara was obstinate; she did not
at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not going to
throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard will slang me
dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom urged. "Tell me at
least where he can find you."
"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going straight
home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol in a pet,
and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow seemed to have
fallen over all things. But just as she was getting into the 'bus, a
hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a well-known voice hailed her.
The hansom stopped, and Everard got out and held out his hand.
"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."
"I _was_ punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting out of this
'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going home."
"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The regret
on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was wearing in the
button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to her.
"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him in the
hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you had come and
gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"
[Illustration: "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."]
A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
murmured.
"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the matter with
Peters?"
"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."
"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you were
above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also to be
reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been always
together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for Tom. You
must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."
"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude and
broad daylight.
"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously. "I
shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."
"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the moment I
saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."
"You are quite wrong about him--quite wrong," he assured her earnestly.
"When you know him better, you'll find him the best of fellows. Oh, I
know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very untidy, and you women go
so much by appearances!"
"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by appearances."
"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.
She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as he
plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however, when he
entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.
"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he grumbled.
"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us together," she
answered. "He said he would when you came."
"And yet you say you don't like him!"
She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at the
man's absence.