The Phantom Lover Part 19

Micky's face changed; he had not counted on this.

"Good Lord!" he said. "You didn't tell him you----?"

Driver raised his eyes.

"I never tell anybody anything, sir," he said woodenly.

Micky breathed a sigh of relief.

"Good man.... He was alone, of course?"

"Alone at the hotel, but I saw him out driving twice with the same lady, sir."

"You saw him out twice--driving with the same lady?" Micky echoed the man's words vaguely. "All right--you can go."

"Thank you, sir." Driver departed, closing the door noiselessly.

Ashton had soon found consolation, Micky thought savagely. He wondered what Esther would say if she could know. What was Driver thinking about it all? Driver was safe as the Bank of England; but, all the same, it was not altogether pleasant to feel that he had had to give himself away to his valet.

He looked up at the clock. Past nine! So there would not be another post in to-night.

Esther had not answered his note, and two whole days had elapsed.

Micky began pacing the room. Why had she so suddenly thrown him over, he wondered miserably.

He could not imagine what he had done to offend her.

He hardly knew how the days had pa.s.sed since New Year's Eve. He had not visited any of his old haunts or seen any of his friends. It almost seemed as if he had opened the book of a new life and forgotten about the old.

She might have answered his letter. Dash it all! he wasn't just a bounder who had spoken to her for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. He kicked a ha.s.sock out of his way and went to bed.

If he didn't hear in the morning, he would risk it and go round to see her. At the worst she could only have the door shut in his face....

"And even then----" he told his reflection in the mirror fiercely, as he struggled with a stud. "Even then I'm not done--and I'll show her that I'm not...."

June Mason was mixing perfume the following morning when a little knock came at her door.

She looked up from her work and listened; after a second she resumed her occupation briskly.

"Come in," she said.

She did not raise her eyes when the door opened, though she knew quite well who had entered the room, and for a second Esther Shepstone stood on the threshold hesitatingly, then she spoke.

"May I come in?"

June Mason looked up with an exaggerated start; she was a picturesque figure at that moment in a big white overall, and with a scarf of her favourite mauve tied over her dark head.

She held a little phial in either hand, and there was a delicious faint smell of rose perfume in the room.

"You!" she said. "Gracious! I thought you were dead and buried long enough ago. Oh yes, come in.... You don't mind me going on with my work, do you? I'm up to my eyes in it.... Sit down."

But Esther stood where she was, the eagerness died out of her pretty face.

"I won't stay if you're busy," she said. "I'll come another time, but----" she hesitated. Across the room the eyes of the two girls met, and June Mason promptly put down the two little phials.

"Come in and apologise, and so will I," she said heartily. "There!"

She reached up--Esther was taller than she--and gave the younger girl a sounding kiss. "There! I don't often kiss people, so you can consider yourself flattered." She dragged forward a chair and pushed Esther into it. "Now, what do you want, and where's that Charlie?

You've no idea how I've missed him. No--you stay there, and I'll go and fetch him up."

She darted off, and returned a moment later with Charlie in her arms.

There were yards of mauve ribbon lying on the table and she cut off a length and tied it in a bow round his neck; then she kissed his head and dropped him on to his cus.h.i.+on. "There! Now, we're quite at home again," she said. "And now, fire away and tell me why you're here."

She packed all the dishes and boxes on to a tray, put them out of sight behind a screen and came back to the fire.

"Do you like this perfume? It's something new! I'm trying to blend it with white rose. Isn't it gorgeous?"

"Beautiful!" said Esther. She consented to have her chin dabbed. "What are you making now?" she asked.

Miss Mason chuckled.

"Oh, I'm only experimising, as Micky calls it," she said lightly. "We don't want to talk shop. You've got some news; I can see by your face that you have."

Esther laughed and flushed.

"Oh, I have," she said tremulously. "Such wonderful news."

"Humph!" said June drily. "From the young man, of course? Well, is he on his way home, and have you got to get a wedding dress in the next five minutes or something?"

"Oh no, it isn't anything like that," said Esther. There was a shade of regret in her voice. "But he's in Paris--he says he's not staying there, but he had to pay a business call."

June gave a rather unladylike sniff, but Esther was too engrossed to notice.

"He seems to have been very lucky," she went on. "He hadn't got very much money when he went away, but he's got some appointment now; he does not say what and...."--she gave a little excited laugh--"he says that he's going to send me 3 a week for as long as he is away....

Isn't it wonderfully good of him? I suppose I ought not to take it, but he says that if things had turned out as he hoped, we should have been married, and so ... you don't think it's wrong of me to take it, do you?" she asked anxiously.

June rose to her feet. She looked chagrined; she had been so sure that this man was a rotter, that it was a bit of a set-back to hear this news.

"You take it, my dear, and don't be a goose," she said promptly. "As he says, if you were his wife you'd take it, and as you're going to be married, it's quite the right thing if he's well off that he should help you! I hope you won't let your silly pride make you send it back; you'd only hurt his feelings."

"I wouldn't do that for anything," Esther said quickly. "But it's such a lot of money."

"Rubbis.h.!.+" said June. "Why, Micky Mellowes wouldn't even stop to pick it up if he dropped it in the road."

"We are not all millionaires like Mr. Mellowes," Esther said sharply.

"And he ought to be ashamed of himself if he really wouldn't stop to pick it up."