Rossmoyne Part 61

"'I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Bened.i.c.k: n.o.body marks you,'" she quotes, with a touch of scorn.

"_You_ do, my dear Lady Disdain, or else you would not have addressed me that contemptuous remark."

"An absurd story, altogether!" says Olga, throwing up her head, a smile lightening her eyes as they meet Kelly's. At her tone, which is more amused than annoyed, Ronayne lets his hand fall into the water close to hers, and doubtless finds its cool touch (the water's, I mean, of course) very refres.h.i.+ng, as it is fully five minutes before he brings it to the surface again.

"True, nevertheless," says Kelly. "Both the princ.i.p.als in my story were friends of mine. I knew--indeed, I may safely say I _know_--them well."

"I am glad you said '_were_,'" says Olga, shaking her blonde head at him. Lord Rossmoyne, by this time, is looking as black as a thunder-cloud.

"A questionable friend you must be, to tell tales out of school," says Mrs. Herrick.

"I defy any one to say I have told anything," says Kelly, with much-injured innocence. "But I am quite prepared to hear my actions, as usual, grossly maligned. I am accustomed to it now. The benefit of the doubt is not for _me_."

"There isn't a doubt," says Hermia.

"Go on. I must try to bear it,"--meekly. "I know I am considered incapable of a pure motive."

"Was it you drew back the curtain?"

"Well, really, yes, I believe it was. I wanted my friend, you see, and I knew I should find him with the bangles. Yes; it was I drew the curtain."

"Just what I should have expected from you," says Mrs. Herrick.

"Ah! Thank you! Now at last you are beginning to see things in their true light, and to take my part," says Mr. Kelly, with exaggerated grat.i.tude. "Now, indeed, I feel I have not lived in vain! You have, though at a late hour, recognized the extraordinary prompt.i.tude that characterizes my every action. While another might have been hesitating, I drew the curtain. I am seldom to be found wanting, I may, indeed, always be discovered just where----"

"You _aren't_ wanting," interrupts Mrs. Herrick, with a sudden smile.

"How can _that_ be," says Kelly, with reproachful sadness, "when I am generally to be found near you?"

At this Hermia gives in, and breaks into a low soft laugh.

"But I wish you had not told that story of Olga and Mr. Ronayne," she says, in a whisper, and with some regret. "You saw how badly Rossmoyne took it."

"That is partly why I told it. I think you are wrong in trying to make that marriage: she would be happier with Ronayne."

"For a month or two, perhaps."

"Oh, make it _three_," says Kelly, satirically. "Surely the little winged G.o.d has so much staying power."

"A few weeks ago you told me you did not believe in him at all."

"I have changed all that."

"Ah! _you_ can be fickle too."

"A man is not necessarily fickle because when he discovers the only true good he leaves the bad and presses towards it. I think, too, his mentor," in a lowered tone, "should be the last to misjudge him."

"Nothing is so lasting, at least, as riches," says Mrs. Herrick, with a chastened but unmistakable desire to change his mood. "Olga with unlimited means and an undeniable place in the world of society would be a happier Olga than as the wife of a country gentleman."

"I don't agree with you; but you know best--_perhaps_. You speak your own sentiments, of course. A t.i.tle is indispensable to you too, as well as to her?"

His tone is half a question.

"It counts," she says, slowly, trifling with firm though slender fingers with the gra.s.ses that are growing in the interstices of the marble.

"Pshaw!" says Kelly. Rising with a vehemence foreign to him, he crosses to where Ulic Ronayne is standing alone.

CHAPTER XXII.

How Olga drowns a faithful servant--How Mr. Kelly conjures up a ghost--And how Monica, beneath the mystic moonbeams, grants the gift she first denies.

"Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" he says, lightly, laying his hand on Ulic's shoulder. The latter turns to him with a bright smile that renders his handsome face quite beautiful. Seeing its charm, Kelly asks himself, in half-angry fas.h.i.+on, how Olga can possibly hesitate for one moment between him and Rossmoyne. "But they are all alike heartless,"

he decides, bitterly.

"I am feeling neither pale nor wan," says Ronayne, still smiling. "It must be the moon, if anything. Look here, Kelly, something to-night has told me that it will all come right in the end. I shall gain her against the heaviest odds."

"If you mean Rossmoyne, he's the heaviest mortal I know," says Kelly.

"Well, he _isn't_ suited to her, is he?" There is a strange excitement in Ronayne's manner. "Putting me out of the question altogether, I don't believe he could make her happy. If I thought he could, of course I should then go away somewhere, and find contentment in the thought of hers; but----_you_ don't think she would do well to marry him do you Kelly?" He has controlled his features to an almost marvellous calm, but the agony of his question in his eyes cannot be hid.

"I think the woman who could even _hesitate_ between you and him must be a fool and worse," says Kelly, whose temper is not his own to-night. "He is a pedantic a.s.s, more in love with himself than he can ever be with anything else. While you----Look here, Ronayne; I wonder if any woman is _worth_ it."

"Oh, _she_ is," says Ronayne, with tender conviction. "I don't think she is at all like other people; do you? There's something different--something _special_--about her."

"I daresay," says Kelly, gently, which is rather good of him, considering his frame of mind.

"You're an awfully kind sort of fellow, Kelly, do you know?" says Ronayne, slipping his arm through his. "You are the only one I ever talk to about _her_. And I suppose I must bore you, though you don't say it.

It's the most generous thing I know, your sympathizing with me as you do. If you were in love yourself, I could understand it. But you are not, you know."

"Oh, no; of course not," says Mr. Kelly.

"Is that your guitar, Mrs. Bohun? I wish you would sing us something,"

says Miss Browne at this moment.

"I don't sing much,--and never out of doors, it hurts my throat so,"

says Olga, smiling at her; "but if any else will sing, I will gladly play to them."

"Mr. Ronayne,--Ulic,--come here," says Monica, half shyly, but very sweetly. "You can sing, I know."

"Yes come here," says Olga, turning to him, and away from Lord Rossmoyne, who is talking to her in low, short, angry tones. But the latter, laying his hand on her arm, half compels her to turn to him again.

"Let some one else accompany him if he _must_ sing," he says; "_any_ one but you."

"No one else can."