The Golden Web Part 5

Deane smiled. "Let us hope," said he, "that after you are married you will still regard the situation in the same light. Your friend Julia, for instance, declares that she would never have married anyone who was not kept away from home at regular intervals."

Lady Olive leaned a little towards him. After all, he had been very nice. The Elstrees had found him delightful, and there was no man in the lounge half so good-looking. She decided to say something charming.

"Julia," she whispered, "was never in love with her husband, even before she married him."

"And you?" Deane murmured.

She laughed at him and looked away, but he was suddenly insistent, taking her hand, and forcing her to turn again towards him.

"Tell me," he said quietly, "do you really care for me, Olive? Oh! I know you care enough to justify you in marrying me, but I mean something different. I mean do you really care in the great fas.h.i.+on, you know, like the people one reads of,--like Iseult, and Amy Robsart, and those others?"

She looked at him as though he were speaking some foreign language. The earnestness in his face was unmistakable. She answered him with a perplexed little frown upon her forehead. "Ah, I wonder!" she murmured.

"What a very strange question to ask me, Stirling, just now! Frankly, I don't know. I can only tell you that there is no other man. You are quite alone."

The others were all discussing some subject of kindred interest. Deane felt curiously prompted to continue his questioning. His engagement had been such a very matter-of-fact affair. To a certain extent it was understood that he was marrying for position, and she for wealth. And yet in all their conversations they had discreetly concealed the fact.

They had told each other that they cared, if not with pa.s.sion, at least in the most approved manner. There had been no suggestion in their many tete-a-tetes that they were about to embark upon a _mariage de convenance_.

"Tell me," Deane persisted, "if things should go wrong with me, or if you had met me simply as a struggler, with my feet upon the early rungs of the ladder,--tell me, could you have cared then, do you think?"

She looked at him curiously. There was something in his face which compelled the truth. "I do not know," she said. "Let me think."

"Think, by all means," he continued. "Remember that I was introduced to you, even, as one of the youngest millionaires. Forgive me if I seem egotistical, but I have a fancy to put things plainly. There is a glamour about wealth. I came to you with that glamour about my name. I am rich, of course, and wealth means power. How much of your affection, Olive, came out to the man, and how much to the millionaire?"

"You want me to give you a perfectly honest answer?" she asked.

"Absolutely," he a.s.sured her. "Don't be afraid of hurting my vanity. I want nothing but the truth."

"At first, then," she told him, "nothing to the man, and everything to the millionaire. This afternoon," she continued, "I rather fancy that the man has the larger share. You are quite a fascinating person, Stirling, when you choose to make yourself agreeable."

"You can't accuse me," he remarked, "of making any special efforts in that direction to-day."

"No!" she answered. "You were rather quiet, but still you were yourself.

Personally, I am beginning to find something very attractive about a silent man. You speak quite often enough, and what you say is to the point. It seems always to be the p.r.o.nouncement of the man who knows. You have what Julia calls an air of reserved strength about you, which I fancy that my s.e.x finds a little attractive. Tell me, why all this questioning?"

Deane looked away--through the cl.u.s.ter of palms into the little smoking-room from which he had issued a few minutes before.

"Even the houses," he said, "which according to the injunctions of Scripture are built upon a rock, are liable to destruction by earthquakes. So, even, the strongest of us in the city have always the hundredth chance working in the world against us. The most amazing collapses have taken place. I was really wondering what would happen--how greatly it would affect you--if my riches were to vanish into thin air."

"What an unpractical person you are this afternoon!" she murmured, looking at him curiously. "Supposing I were to sit here and worry about the fit of the dress which Madame Oliver is sending me home this afternoon for the ball to-night. I could make myself miserable in five minutes without the shadow of a reason."

"Madame Oliver," he declared, "would deserve bankruptcy if she failed to fit a figure like yours."

Lady Olive laughed. "Really," she said, "you are becoming quite a courtier."

"Dear people," Julia Raynham murmured, leaning over, "if we may bring you back to the mundane world, everybody else is dying to start for Ranelagh."

Lady Olive made a little grimace, and rose to her feet at once.

"Stirling and I have only been boring one another because you all seemed so occupied," she declared. "Ranelagh, by all means. It is quite time we made a move."

They made their way toward the Pall Mall entrance of the restaurant.

Lady Olive fell back once more with Deane.

"It's such a nuisance about this wretched dinner to-night," she said. "I think it was very bad taste indeed of the d.u.c.h.ess to ask us without you.

You won't forget to come in and see me for half-an-hour before we go on to the ball? I shall be in my room at eleven o'clock punctually, and I will arrange so that I can take you on to Amberley House."

He bowed. "I shall be with you."

"Where are you dining?" she asked.

"At the club, most likely. I never dine out on Wednesdays, if I can help it. We are always so busy. I shall have a quiet, comfortable evening."

"Au revoir, then!" she said, stepping into one of the two automobiles which were waiting.

Deane made his adieux to the rest of the party and watched them drive off. Then he called a hansom.

"Messrs. Hardaway and Sons, Bedford Row," he told the man. "Drive as quickly as you can."

CHAPTER VIII

AN AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY

John Hardaway, although he was a solicitor in a very busy practice, did not keep his friend waiting for a moment. "Come in, Deane, old chap," he said. "Is this business or friends.h.i.+p?"

"Mostly business," declared Deane.

Hardaway glanced at the clock. "Twelve minutes, precisely," he said.

"Fire away, there's a good fellow. You are not going to give me the affairs of the Incorporated Gold-Mines a.s.sociation to look after, I suppose?"

"Not I," Deane answered. "They need a more subtle brain than yours, I am afraid. I have come to see you about the other affair."

The lawyer nodded. "You heard the result?" he asked. "We did what we could."

"Perhaps," Deane answered. "The only thing is that you did not do enough. I am perfectly convinced, Hardaway, that that man did not go there with the intention of murdering Sinclair."

"The evidence," Hardaway remarked, "was exceedingly awkward."

"Do you think," Deane asked, "that there is any chance of a reprieve?"

"As things stand at present," said Hardaway, "I am afraid not."

Deane for the first time sat down. With frowning face, he seemed to be engaged in a deliberate study of the pattern of the carpet. "Hardaway,"

he said finally, "I want to ask you a question in criminal law."

The lawyer laughed dryly. "Not on your own account, I hope?"