saw Miss Roberts take her seat behind it, and shifted his glance to another quarter. He was preoccupied, and answered at random Adeline's amused queries as to the food. Between the soup and the entrée they were kept waiting; and Adeline, Richard being taciturn, moved her chair in order to look round the room. Her roving eyes stopped at the cash-desk, left it, and returned to it. Then a scornful smile, albeit scarcely perceptible, appeared on her face; but she said nothing. Richard saw her glance curiously at the cash-desk several times, and he knew, too, that Miss Roberts had discovered them. In vain he assured himself that Miss Roberts was not concerned in his affairs; he could not dismiss a sensation of uneasiness and discomfort. Once he fancied that the eyes of the two girls met, and that both turned away suddenly.
When the dinner was over, and they were drinking the coffee for which the Crabtree is famous, Adeline said abruptly,—
"I know someone here."
"Oh!" said Richard, with fictitious nonchalance. "Who?"
"The girl at the pay-desk,—Roberts, her name is."
"Where have you met her?" he inquired.
Adeline laughed inimically. He was startled, almost shocked, by the harsh mien which transformed her face.
"You remember one night, just before uncle died," she began, bending towards him, and talking very quietly. "Someone called while you and I were in the sitting-room, to inquire how he was. That was Laura Roberts. She used to know uncle—she lives in our street. He made love to her—she didn't care for him, but he had money and she encouraged him. I don't know how far it went—I believe I stopped it. Oh! men are the strangest creatures. Fancy, she's not older than me, and uncle was over fifty!"
"Older than you, surely!" Richard put in.
"Well, not much. She knew I couldn't bear her, and she called that night simply to annoy me."
"What makes you think that?"
"Think! I know it.... But you must have heard of the affair. Didn't they talk about it at your office?"
"I believe it was mentioned once," he said hastily.
She leaned back in her chair, with the same hard smile. Richard felt sure that Miss Roberts had guessed they were talking about herself, and that her eyes were fixed on them, but he dared not look up for confirmation; Adeline gazed boldly around her. They were antagonistic, these two women, and Richard, do what he would, could not repress a certain sympathy with Miss Roberts. If she had encouraged Mr. Aked's advances, what of that? It was no mortal sin, and he could not appreciate the reason of Adeline's strenuous contempt for her. He saw a little gulf widening between himself and Adeline.
"What tremendously red hair that girl has!" she said, later on.
"Yes, but doesn't it look fine!"
"Ye-es," Adeline agreed condescendingly.
When he paid the bill, on the way out, Miss Roberts greeted him with an inclination of the head. He met her eye steadily, and tried not to blush. As she checked the bill with a tapping pencil, he could not help remarking her face. Amiability, candour, honesty, were clearly written on its attractive plainness. He did not believe that she had been guilty of running after Mr. Aked for the sake of his money. The tales told by Jenkins were doubtless ingeniously exaggerated; and as for Adeline, Adeline was mistaken.
"Good evening," Miss Roberts said simply, as they went out. He raised his hat.
"You know her, then!" Adeline exclaimed in the street.
"Well," he answered, "I've been going there, off and on, for a year or two, and one gets acquainted with the girls." His tone was rather petulant. With a quick, winning smile, she changed the subject, and he suspected her of being artful.
Chapter XXIV
"I am going to America," she said.
They sat in the sitting-room at Carteret street. Richard had not seen her since the dinner at the vegetarian restaurant, and these were almost the first words she addressed to him. Her voice was as tranquil as usual; but he discerned, or thought he discerned, in her manner a consciousness that she was guilty towards him, that at least she was not treating him justly.
The blow was like that of a bullet: he did not immediately feel it.
"Really?" he questioned foolishly, and then, though he knew that she would never return: "For how long are you going, and how soon?"
"Very soon, because I always do things in a hurry. I don't know for how long. It's indefinite. I have had a letter from my uncles in San Francisco, and they say I must join them; they can't do without me. They are making a lot of money now, and neither of them is married.... So I suppose I must obey like a good girl. You see I have no relatives here, except Aunt Grace."
"You many never come back to England?"
(Did she colour, or was it Richard's fancy?)
"Well, I expect I may visit Europe sometimes. It wouldn't do to give England up entirely. There are so many nice things in England,—in London especially...."
Once, in late boyhood, he had sat for an examination which he felt confident of passing. When the announcement arrived that he failed, he could not believe it, though all the time he knew it to be true. His thoughts ran monotonously: "There must be some mistake; there must be some mistake!" and like a little child in the night, he resolutely shut his eyes to keep out the darkness of the future. The same puerility marked him now. Assuming that Adeline fulfilled her intention, his existence in London promised to be tragically cheerless. But this gave him no immediate concern, because he refused to contemplate the possibility of their intimacy being severed. He had, indeed, ceased to think; somewhere at the back of the brain his thoughts lay in wait for him. For the next two hours (until he left the house) he lived mechanically, as it were, and not by volition, subsisting merely on a previously acquired momentum.
He sat in front of her and listened. She began to talk of her uncles Mark and Luke. She described them in detail, told stories of her childhood, even recounted the common incidents of her daily life with them. She dwelt on their kindness of heart, and their affection for herself; and with it all she seemed a little to patronise them, as though she had been accustomed to regard them as her slaves.
"They are rather old-fashioned," she said, "unless they have altered. Since I heard from them, I have been wondering what they would think about my going to theatres and so on—with you."
"What should they think?" Richard broke in. "There's nothing whatever in that. London isn't a provincial town, or even an American city."
"I shall tell them all about you," she went on, "and how kind you were to me when I scarcely knew you at all. You couldn't have been kinder if you'd been my only cousin."
"Say 'brother,'" he laughed awkwardly.
"No, really, I'm quite serious. I never thanked you properly. Perhaps I seemed to take it all as a matter of course."
He wished to heaven she would stop.
"I'm disgusted that you are going," he grumbled, putting his hands behind
