I
The rare delight of his meetings with Margaret was at an end. Bluff
Fortune had slammed the door in his face, and White-handed Hope had
folded her golden wings and sat moping with melancholy mien.
He wandered into Kensington Gardens, but the daffodils swung their
heads despondently, and the gorgeous masses of hyacinths made him
think of funeral plumes on horses' heads.
He went on into the Park. She might be driving there, and he might
catch glimpse of her. But she was not, and all the rest were less than
nothing to him.
He found himself at Hyde Park Corner and back again at Kensington
Gate. But the door was still closed in his face, and he longed for the
sight of somebody else's as he had never longed before.
The post was of course open to him, but, at this stage at all events,
he felt that the written word would be eminently inadequate and
unsatisfying.
He wanted, when he approached that mighty question, to look into her
eyes and see her answer in their pure depths before it reached her
lips,--to watch the fluttering heart-signals in her sweet face and
learn from them more than all the words in the world could tell.
Letters were, at best, to actual speech but as actual speech would be
to all that his heart-quickened eyes would discover if he could but
ask her face to face.
And besides--he would have wished to make his footing somewhat surer
before putting everything to the test.
But, since matters had gone thus far, it was quite out of the question
to let them stop there unresolved. Either the precious cargo must be
brought safely into port or the derelict must be sunk and the fairway
cleared. The question was--how to proceed?
The unwritten laws of social usage would hardly permit him to carry
the Pixley mansion by assault and insist on seeing Miss Brandt.
Besides, that might expose her to annoyance, and that he would not
upon any consideration.
And so, before he reached his rooms, his mind was groping clumsily
after written phrases which should in some sort express that which was
in him without saying too much too soon,--which should delicately hint
his regrets at this sudden curtailment of their acquaintance, and
leave it for her to say whether or no she regarded the matter in the
same light.
Lady Elspeth's sudden summons to the north furnished an acceptable
text. Margaret was not to know that he knew of her call at Phillimore
Gardens. It was surely but a friendly act on his part to inform her of
a matter so nearly concerning one who was dear to them both.
It took a considerable time, however, and the expenditure of much
thought and ink and paper, before he succeeded in producing a letter
in any degree to his liking. And even when it was written many
perusals only served to deepen his doubts.
In any case, it was the best he could do under the circumstances, and
since he could not see her answer in her eyes or in her face, the
words she would send him in reply would surely afford his quickened
perceptions some indication of her feeling, though nothing to what her
presence would have told him.