"I think that I have earned him, Marian!"
Mrs Glover, putting up her glasses, surveyed Lady Griswold through them
quizzically.
"Earned him? You have earned him, over and over again, a hundred
thousand times, my dear."
Lady Griswold positively blushed with pleasure.
"Do you really think so? Do you really think that he will think so too?
To look at me you would not think I was romantic, but I suppose I am."
"If there is a more romantic creature at present existing in the world
I should like to meet her, or rather, I am almost tempted to say I
shouldn't. Are you sure that after all your romance will end well?"
"Sure?" Lady Griswold seemed surprised. "How do you mean?"
"Are you sure that this Mr Ferguson of yours will adequately reward you
for your eighteen years of--what shall I say?--servitude or waiting?"
Lady Griswold dropped her eyes in that girlish way she had. Her fingers
trifled with a fold in the skirt of her dress.
"You do not know him."
"I fancied that I did. I assure you I hear enough of him from Mr
Glover. Mr Glover seems to think that some fine day Mr Ferguson is
going to save the country."
"I have no doubt that he will, when there is need of him. I mean that
you do not know him as--I know him. He will adequately reward me
for--oh, for more than I have done."
"Indeed." There was an odd smile about the visitor's lips. "He seems to
be very much struck with that girl of yours."
"With Inez? He is good to her for my sake. I know what he suffers,
because, you see, she is so different from me in all respects. But it
is like him, to suffer for me."
"Frankly, Helen, is there a definite engagement between you?"
"Well, Marian, you are trying to dig deeper into my secrets than I
quite bargained for. But I don't mind telling you that it was he who
asked me to come home."
"He asked you to come home, did he? Did he ask you to come home to be
his wife?"
Lady Griswold's cheeks went flaming red.
"Marian, I will tell you nothing else than this, that I am the happiest
woman in the world."
There was an odd smile about the visitor's lips.
"You are at least the funniest woman in the world, my dear. It appears
to me that you have devoted one portion of your life to the pursuit of
one chimera. I only hope that you are not going to devote the remaining
portion to the pursuit of another."
"A chimera! Do you call Ronald a chimera?" Lady Griswold laughed. "I
will tell Ronald that you called him a chimera."
Mrs Glover rose to go.
"You may tell him that I called him what you please. I don't think he
is likely to care for what I may call him. He has been called too many
things in his time to be super-sensitive. Mr Ferguson was born hard.
The life he has lived has made him one of the hardest men I know. I am
not saying it at all as a reproach, my dear; it seems to me that coming
statesmen have to be hard, but it is so."
"My dear Marian, you don't know Ronald. He may seem hard outwardly.
Inwardly, it only requires a touch to turn him into a naming fiery
furnace."
Lady Griswold stated the truth more exactly than, for an instant, she
imagined. Mrs Glover would not allow that it was the truth.
"You really are the funniest woman, my dear Helen. If Mr Ferguson's
temperature ever gets to summer heat he will be in danger of--well,
cracking. But never mind that. All's well that ends well. I only hope
that it will all end well with you, my dear."
"All end well!" Lady Griswold told herself, when her visitor had gone.
"She only hopes that it will all end well with me. As though it could
end any other way but well! Foolish Marian! These women of the world
have not, in their keeping, all the wisdom. Their besetting weakness is
that they are so apt to measure other people's corn with their own
bushels."
There was a photograph frame, fastened with a clasp, on the table at
which she was standing. She unclasped it. It contained the usual
photograph of Mr Ferguson, the very latest.
"Ronald, she does not know you, she says that you are hard. My Ronald!"
She pressed her lips against the pictured lips in the pictured face.
"How often I have kissed your effigy! When--" she was actually
trembling--"when shall I kiss your living lips instead?" Laying the
photograph down upon the table, she covered her face with her hands.
"When, when? How often have I cried for you in the dead of the night,
and--and yearned to hold you in my arms!"
She seemed to be positively crying. She was crying, there was not a
doubt of it. Removing her hands from before her flaming face, with her
handkerchief she dried the tears which stood in her smarting eyes.
"I think, as Marian says, that I have earned you. I have waited for you
eighteen years. You must not make me wait much longer. I will not let
you, Ronald. When one has loved, for eighteen years, as I have loved,
one's love--one's love becomes--too much for one." She looked down as
if, although she was alone, she was ashamed. "I wonder if it was the
climate, or whether it is I. I think--I think that it is I. Love with
me is not, I think, an affair of climate." She stretched out her arms
in front of her with a strange gesture of strange passion. "I think
that I am made for love! Ronald, I am made for love! That day of which,
almost in my madness, I have dreamed, that day for which I have waited
eighteen years, that day when you shall take me in your arms, I shall
go mad--with joy--that joy which follows after waiting. Ronald!
Ronald!"
Again she put her hands before her face. She trembled as with fever.
She began to pace, feverishly, about the room.
"I wonder what he is waiting for? I wonder if he thinks it is too soon?
Too soon! Too soon! If he thinks it is too soon, I, even I, I myself,
will show him if it is too soon. Ronald! Ronald!"
Even while the name was still upon her lips a servant was standing with
the handle of the open door in his hand, announcing,--
"Mr Ferguson!"
And Mr Ferguson came in.
As Lady Griswold turned to greet him, one could not but feel that she
was beautiful. Beautiful with the beauty which is the crowning beauty
of all beauty in the eyes of many men. The beauty of the beautiful
woman who is in the full, rich, ripe glory of her summer's prime. She
advanced to him with both her hands held out.
"Ronald!"
There was a look of welcome on her face, and in her eyes and about her
lips, and, as it seemed, in every curve and outline of her body, for
which some men, to have had it appear for them, would nave given a good
slice of their possessions. But Mr Ferguson seemed, positively, as if
he would rather that it had not been there.
He seemed reluctant, even, to yield her one of his hands in exchange
for both of hers.
"Lady Griswold--"
"Lady Griswold! Why do you call me Lady Griswold? Call me Helen! Am I
not Helen?"