The Adventures of a Widow Part 14

"You seem vexed," said Kindelon, who had been intently though furtively regarding her.

"I am vexed," she murmured. Her increased color was still a deep rose.

"Is there anything very horrible in walking for a little while on the Battery?" he questioned.

She gave a broken laugh. "Yes," she answered. "I'm afraid there is."

Kindelon shrugged his shoulders. "But surely you are your own mistress?"

"Rather too much so," she said, with lowered eyes. "At least that is what people will say, I suppose."

"I thought you were above idle and aimless comments."

"Let us go back to the carriage."

"By all means, if you prefer it."

They reversed their course, and moved along for some time in silence. "I think you must understand," Pauline suddenly said, lifting her eyes to Kindelon's face.

"I understand," he replied, with hurt seriousness, "that I was having one of the pleasantest hours I have ever spent, until that man accosted us like a grim fate."

"You must not call my cousin Courtlandt 'that man.' I don't like it."

"I am sorry," he said curtly, and a little doggedly. "I might have spoken more ill of him, but I didn't."

Pauline was biting her lips. "You have no right to speak ill of him,"

she retorted. "He is my cousin."

"That is just the reason why I held my tongue."

"You don't like him, then?"

"I do not."

"I can readily comprehend it."

Kindelon's light-blue eyes fired a little under their black lashes. "You say that in a way I do not understand," he answered.

"You and Courtlandt are of a different world."

"I am not a combination of a fop and a parson, if you mean that."

Pauline felt herself grow pale with anger as she shot a look up into her companion's face.

"You would not dare say that to my cousin himself," she exclaimed defiantly, "though you dare say it to me!"

Kindelon had grown quite pale. His voice trembled as he replied. "I dare do anything that needs the courage of a man," he said. "I thought you knew me well enough to be sure of this."

"Our acquaintance is a recent one," responded Pauline. She felt nearly certain that she had shot a wounding shaft in those few words, but she chose to keep her eyes averted and not see whether wrath or pain had followed its delivery.

A long silence followed. They had nearly reached her carriage when Kindelon spoke.

"You are in love with your cousin," he said.

She threw back her head, laughing ironically. "What a seer you are!" she exclaimed. "How did you guess that?"

"Ah," he answered her, with a melancholy gravity, "you will not deny it!"

She repeated her laugh, though it rang less bitterly than before. She had expected him to meet her irony in a much more rebellious spirit.

"I don't like to have my blood-relations abused in my hearing," she said. "I am in love with all of them, that way, if that is the way you mean."

"That is not the way I mean."

They were now but a few yards from the waiting carriage. The footman, seeing them, descended from his box, and stood beside the opened door.

"I shall not return with you," continued Kindelon, "since I perceive you do not wish my company longer. But I offer you my apologies for having spoken disparagingly of your cousin. I was wrong, and I beg your pardon."

With the last words he extended his hand. Pauline took it.

"I have not said that I did not wish your company," she answered, "but if you choose to infer so, it is your own affair."

"I do infer so, and I infer more.... It is best that I--I should not see you often, like this. There is a great difference between you and me.

That cousin of yours hated me at sight. Your aunt, Mrs. Poughkeepsie, hated me at sight as well. Perhaps their worldly wisdom was by no means to blame, either.... Oh, I understand more than you imagine!"

There was not only real grief in Kindelon's voice, but an under-throb of real pa.s.sion.

"Understand?" Pauline murmured. "What do you understand?"

"That you are as stanch and loyal as ever to your old traditions. That this idea of change, of amelioration, of casting aside your so-called patrician bondage, has only the meaning of a dainty gentlewoman's dainty caprice ... that"--

His voice broke. It almost seemed to her as if his large frame was shaken by some visible tremor. She had no thought of being angry at him now.

She pitied him, and yet with an irresistible impulse her thought flew to Cora Dares, the sweet-faced young painter, and what she herself had of late grown to surmise, to suspect. A sort of involuntary triumph blent itself with her pity, on this account.

She spoke in a kind voice, but also in a firm one. She slightly waved her hand toward the adjacent carriage. "Will you accompany me, then?"

she asked.

He looked at her fixedly for an instant. Then he shook his head. "No,"

he answered. "Good-by." He lifted his hat, and walked swiftly away.

She had seen his eyes just before he went. Their look haunted her. She entered the carriage, and was driven up town. She told herself that he had behaved very badly to her. But she did not really think this. She was inwardly thrilled by a strange, new pleasure, and she had shed many tears before reaching home.

IX.