The Phantom Lover Part 71

"Marie."

She did not raise her head.

"I want to speak to you," he said huskily.

She looked up then. Her face was flashed and quivering, and the brown eyes that for a moment met his own were full of an unutterable grief and shame.

"Oh," she said in a broken whisper. "If you'd just go away--and leave me to myself."

Micky did not answer. The impossibility of ever going back now struck him to the soul. This was the end, the very end--he had burned his boats and bidden good-bye to the woman he loved for ever.

Then all his natural chivalry rose in his heart. Hitherto it had been only of himself that he had thought, but now ... his eyes softened as they rested on the girl's bowed head; he stooped and took her hand, held it fast in his steady grip.

"Will you marry me?" he said very gently.

And, oh, the long time before she answered! It seemed to Micky that he lived through years as he stood there with the rattling tune of the one-step in his ears and Marie's tragic figure before his eyes. Was she never going to speak?

Then she sat up very stiff and straight--there were tears scorching her flushed cheeks, and her eyes seemed to burn.

"Will I--will I--marry you?" she echoed, as if not understanding.

Her voice rose a little.

"Then it isn't true ... it can't be true--what he said?"

"What did he say? Who are you talking about? What do you mean?"

She began to sob; quiet, tearless sobs that seemed to bring no relief with them.

"Raymond Ashton--he told me--here! just now--that you...." She stopped, catching her breath at the change in Micky's face; it no longer looked tender--his eyes were fierce.

"Ashton! What has he said?" His voice was roughly insistent.

"He told me that you--you were in Paris--a week or two ago--with a girl from Eldred's."

"It's a lie!" The words escaped Micky before he could check them; his first thought was to defend Esther. "It's an infernal lie!" he said again violently.

It turned him cold to think of all that the brute must have implied.

The tears were frozen on Marie's cheeks--her hands were clasped together in her lap.

When at last she found her voice it was strained and cracked.

"... that she told him you were there with her...." Her brown eyes searched his face as if they were trying to read his very soul. "If it's a lie," she said shrilly, "it's she who is lying--she told Raymond Ashton that she was there with you."

"She told him...."

For a moment Micky stood like a man turned to stone. Was this the truth?--that Esther had told Ashton....

He looked again at Marie.

"When did Ashton tell you this?"

"To-night--not a moment ago--he is here."

"Here!" Then to how many more people had he told the same distorted story?

The blood beat into Micky's face; it seemed to hammer maddeningly against his temples. Nothing counted but the fact that Esther's name was being bandied about on the lips of the creature. To stop him--to stop his lying tongue was the one thought in Micky's mind; he saw the whole world red as he tore open the door of the silent room and strode out into the corridor.

The noisy ragtime had ceased, but a storm of deafening applause and cries of "Encore!" filled the ballroom.

An elderly man cannoned into Micky, and stopped short with a laughing apology.

"Hullo, Mellowes--not dancing--what the deuce is the matter?" he asked with sudden change of voice.

Micky pa.s.sed a shaking hand across his mouth--

"Nothing ... where's Ashton--have you seen Ashton?"

"I've just left him; he isn't dancing either. Can't think what's happened to you youngsters to-day. When I was your age...." He broke off, realising that Micky was not listening. "Ashton's in the smoking-room," he said uneasily.

Micky went on; his hands were clenched, his teeth set.

The smoking-room door was half ajar; he could see that there were several men there. There was a clink of gla.s.ses and the sound of voices talking in a rather subdued way.

Micky paused. He knew that if Ashton were there it would mean a scene, and a scene in any one else's house.... The thought snapped at the sound of his own name.

"Mellowes! Well, you do surprise me." There was a chuckle. "Always thought he was one of the good boys.... It just shows that you never know a man till you find him out. Rather an error of judgment to choose Paris, eh? Who did you say she was?"

"A girl from Eldred's--pretty little thing. I knew her before he did.

As a matter of fact, it was only when I cooled off...."

That was Ashton's voice; Micky could not see him, but he could picture vividly the eloquent shrug, the meaning smile with which he finished his incomplete sentence.

The hot blood died down, leaving him cool and alert. He pushed the door wide and walked into the room.

The group of men by the fireplace scattered; some one coughed deprecatingly; some one else seized upon a siphon and began filling an already full gla.s.s recklessly.

n.o.body spoke.

Micky kicked the door to behind him, shutting it with a slam.

His eyes went straight to Ashton--a pale Ashton, trying to smile unconcernedly and brazen the situation out.

"I'll give you two minutes in which to apologise," Micky said in a voice of steel. "Two minutes in which to retract the d.a.m.ned lies you've just been saying in this room--or--or I'll thrash you within an inch of your life."

In the silence following one could have heard a pin drop. Every one looked at Ashton. Micky took out his watch.