Grit Lawless Part 44

By an odd coincidence the first person he came across in the Smythes'

drawing-room after greeting his hostess was Mrs Lawless. He was, he discovered later, to take her in to dinner. He had not seen her to speak to since the evening he had called upon her at the time of Simmonds' murder, and he was not quite sure until she turned and spoke to him how he stood in her regard.

She was looking very lovely, but older, he decided. He had never observed anyone age as she had within a few months. There were lines in her face that had not been there when he first knew her, and her eyes were sadder, her bearing altogether less confident. Some people might have considered her less attractive on this account; but to him, in the clouded expression of the thoughtful eyes, in the thin line that ran from nose to mouth, there was a pathetic appeal that was infinitely womanly, and therefore more alluring than the proud defiance of youth.

She held out her hand to him, and smiled a welcome.

"I began to think that you and I were not to meet again," she said.

"That is a very gracious speech," he answered, "for it permits me the belief that you were not unwilling for a meeting. But there is a grim suggestion underlying the words that pleases me less. Is it my speedy dissolution you antic.i.p.ate?"

"No," she answered quietly. "But--I thought you might have heard--I'm going Home."

"Indeed!" he said, and looked at her with quickened interest. "That's news to me. Do you leave shortly?"

"Next week," she replied slowly, her fingers entwining themselves in the silver girdle at her waist. "I never intended to stay very long, you know. I came to... Just on a visit."

"And you return satisfied?" he asked, and knew not why he asked the question, nor why she should look at him so strangely with so sad an expression in the look.

"No," she replied.

There was a perceptible pause. He pulled his heavy moustache, and his shrewd eyes met hers with a look of understanding and sympathy. He did not know what her purpose had been in coming out, but he felt she had followed no idle whim, nor sought merely health or pleasure from the visit. She had come, as he had come, for a definite purpose, and while he was leaving with his mission accomplished, she returned discouraged with her object unattained.

"I'm sorry for that," he said... "If there is any way in which I can be of service to you..."

She shook her head.

"I go back as I came," she said... "It was a venture. But at least I have the consolation of knowing that the attempt has been made. One can't help one's failures." She looked into the grave, distinguished face and smiled. "We are in danger of growing serious," she said.

"Look here," he cried quickly, moved by some inexplicable and irresistible impulse, a sense of chivalry perhaps that her evident depression roused in him. "You say you are going home next week. I propose going also. If I can make my arrangements in the time, would it be agreeable to you that I should travel in the same boat?"

"You!" Her voice as well as her face expressed astonishment. "Then you--Have you accomplished your purpose in coming out?" she asked.

A glow of satisfaction overspread his features.

"I have," he answered, and was conscious of feeling half ashamed to show his joy in the successful issue of his undertaking.

She rested her hand, oblivious of the people about them, for a moment on his arm.

"Oh! I'm glad," she said... "I'm glad. That's finished with. I have always felt those letters would cost another life."

"G.o.d forbid!" he muttered, and added rea.s.suringly: "They're past doing harm now... They're destroyed. I burnt them myself--to-day."

She drew a long breath that was, he felt, a sigh of genuine relief. He looked at her curiously. He had never understood her interest in the letters, but he knew she was very greatly interested; and her relief in the knowledge of their destruction conclusively proved that in this matter at least she had no sympathy with Karl Van Bleit. He sometimes wondered whether he had not been mistaken in his opinion as to her feeling for Van Bleit.

"They are making a move," he said to her. And then, as Theodore Smythe spoke to him in pa.s.sing, he turned to her and offered her his arm. "I have the pleasure of taking you in," he added.

And neither of them remembered, then or later, that his question as to travelling Home with her remained unanswered.

Colonel Grey left the Smythes' early as he had arranged to do, and Mrs Lawless, who was going on elsewhere, took her departure at the same time.

"I am crowding all the dissipation possible into my last week," she explained, but withheld the reason for this feverish activity.

He gave her his arm and led her out to the waiting motor. As he came out of the gate Tom Hayhurst, who had been dawdling about for him for the past half-hour, stepped quickly forward; then seeing who was with him stopped abruptly, and drew back. But Mrs Lawless had seen and recognised him.

"Mr Hayhurst!" she exclaimed, in a voice of surprise, and held out her hand.

"You were going to cut me," she said, as he came forward again.

He laughed self-consciously. He was a fool for harbouring malice.

Whatever part she had played in the matter of his broken head, she was an alluringly beautiful woman, and that in his opinion excused a great deal.

"Pardon!" he returned. "I was merely diffident as to my welcome."

She suddenly smiled.

"I rather suspect," she said, "that you are accustomed to being forgiven. I haven't any faith in your diffidence."

Hayhurst opened the door of the car for her and she got in.

"How is it you are not in evening dress? If you had been I would have taken you on to the subscription dance, which is where you ought to be, instead of hanging about other people's doorways."

"If I'd only known sooner..." he murmured regretfully.

She looked at Colonel Grey, who, grave and silent, stood behind the younger man.

"Can I drop you anywhere?" she asked.

"Thank you, no," he answered. "I've an engagement with Mr Lawless at his hotel."

Mrs Lawless started.

"He hasn't come, sir," she heard Tom Hayhurst saying. And then, in reply to an inaudible question: "I met the train. He wasn't there. Van Bleit came by it."

There was a muttered exclamation from the Colonel, and Hayhurst added:

"Yes! I don't like the look of it myself."

"Well, tell me presently."

The words were spoken as a caution. Mrs Lawless leaned forward over the door, the light of the street lamp s.h.i.+ning on her white face.

"Tell him now," she said in a low voice. "I want to hear."

Hayhurst stared back at her.

"There's nothing to tell," he stammered. "We expected Lawless by the train this evening... He didn't come. That's all."

"Where is he?" she asked.