was motionless, but a slight smile showed itself on her face. “What are Quarter-Sessions?” she asked.
“You pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to a month’s imprisonment with hard labour. The guinea I asked you about was my fee. I gave it to that fat policeman to give back to you.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Neston, but it’s really too absurd.” And Neaera relaxed her statuesque attitude, and laughed light-heartedly, deliciously. “No wonder you were startled last night – oh, yes, I saw that – if you identified your cousin’s fiancée with this criminal you’re talking about.”
“I did and do identify her.”
“Seriously?”
“Perfectly. It would be a poor joke.”
“I never heard anything so monstrous. Do you really persist in it? I don’t know what to say.”
“Do you deny it?”
“Deny it! I might as well deny – but of course I deny it. It’s madness.”
“Then I must lay what I know before my uncle and Gerald, and leave them to act as they think best.”
Neaera took a step forward as George rose from his seat. “Do you mean to repeat this atrocious – this insane scandal?”
“I think I must. I should be glad to think I had any alternative.”
Neaera raised one white hand above her head, and brought it down through the air with a passionate gesture.
“I warn you not!” she cried; “I warn you not!”
George bowed.
“It is a lie, and – and if it were true, you could not prove it.”
George thought this her first false step. But there were no witnesses.
“It will be war between us,” she went on in growing excitement. “I will stand at nothing – nothing – to crush you; and I will do it.”
“You must not try to frighten me,” said George.
Neaera surveyed him from head to foot. Then she stretched out her white hand again, and said,
“Go!”
George shrugged his shoulders, took his hat, and went, feeling very much as if Neaera had detected him in theft. So great is the virtue of a good presence and dramatic instincts.
Suddenly he paused; then he went back again, and knocked at the door.
“Come in,” cried Neaera.
As he entered she made an impatient movement. She was still standing where he had left her.
“Pray pardon me. I forgot to say one thing. Of course I am only interested in this – matter, as one of the family. I am not a detective. If you give up Gerald, my mouth is sealed.”
“I will not give up Gerald,” she exclaimed passionately. “I love him. I am not an adventuress; I am rich already. I – ”
“Yes, you could look higher than Gerald, and avoid all this.”
“I don’t care. I love him.”
George believed her. “I wish to God I could spare you – ”
“Spare me? I don’t ask your mercy. You are a slanderer – ”
“I thought I would tell you,” said George calmly.
“Will you not go?” she cried. And her voice broke into a sob.
This was worse than her tragedy airs. George fled without another word, cursing himself for a hard-hearted, self-righteous prig, and then cursing fate that laid this burden on him. What was she doing now, he wondered. Exulting in her triumph? He hoped so; for a different picture obstinately filled his mind – a beautiful woman, her face buried in her white arms, crying the brightness out of her eyes, all because George Neston had a sense of duty. Still he did not seriously waver in his determination. If Neaera had admitted the whole affair and besought his mercy, he felt that his resolution would have been sorely tried. But, as it was, he carried away the impression that he had to deal with a practised hand, and perhaps a little professional zeal mingled with his honest feeling that a woman who would lie like that was a woman who ought to be shown in her true colours.
“I’ll tell uncle Roger and Gerald to-morrow,” he thought. “Of course they will ask for proof. That means a journey to Peckton. Confound other people’s affairs!”
George’s surmise was right. Neaera Witt had spent the first half-hour after his departure in a manner fully as heart-rending as he had imagined. Everything was going so well. Gerald was so charming, and life looked, at last, so bright, and now came this! But Gerald was to dine with her, and there was not much time to waste in crying. She dried her eyes, and doctored them back into their lustre, and made a wonderful toilette. Then she entertained Gerald, and filled him with delight all a long evening. And at eleven o’clock, just as she was driving him out of his paradise, she said,
“Your cousin George was here to-day.”
“Ah, was he? How did you get on with him?”
Neaera had brought her lover his hat. He needed a strong hint to move him. But she put the hat down, and knelt beside Gerald for a minute or two in silence.
“You look sad, darling,” said he. “Did you and George quarrel?”
“Yes – I – It’s very dreadful.”
“Why, what, my sweet?”
“No, I won’t tell you now. He shan’t say I got hold of you first, and prepossessed your mind.”
“What in the world is wrong, Neaera?”
“You will hear, Gerald, soon. But you shall hear it from him. I will not – no, I will not be the first. But, Gerald dear, you will not believe anything against me?”
“Does George say anything against you?”
Neaera threw her arms round his neck. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Then let him take care what it is. Neaera, tell me.”
“No, no, no! He shall tell you first.”
She was firm; and Gerald went away, a very mass of amazement and wrath.
But Neaera said to herself, when she was alone, “I think that was right. But, oh dear, oh dear! what a fuss about” – she paused, and added – “nothing!”
And even if it were not quite nothing, if it were even as much as a pair of shoes, the effect did threaten to be greatly out of proportion to the cause. Old Dawkins, and the fussy clerk, and the fat policeman could never have thought of such a coil as this, or surely, in defiance of all the laws of the land, they would have let that nameless damsel go.
CHAPTER IV.
A SERPENT IN EDEN
On
