Part 25 (1/2)

Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and sc.r.a.ping, and Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the fleeting thought beset her again:

”If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run away and never come back?”

She was already walking up the steps on his arm.

They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.

In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards, smoothly covered with a white counterpane.

She looked about in vain for another bed.

”St. Joseph!” shot through her mind.

The colonel--when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel still--behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit, fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.

She remained leaning against the wall.

”If I want to flee now,” she thought, ”I shall have to throw myself out of the window.”

”Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?” he said. ”If so, I'll engage your services as a clothes horse.”

A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure of his possession.

He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.

A knock at the door.

A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated bottle.

”Champagne again?” asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish feeling.

”The very thing,” he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. ”It gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for her in the trunk.”

She clinked gla.s.ses with him in obedience to his demand, but scarcely moistened her lips with the wine.

He jokingly took her to task, and she pled:

”I shouldn't like to be drunk on such a sacred evening.”

Her answer seemed to gratify him immensely. He burst into a noisy laugh, and observed:

”All the better, all the better!”

He attempted to draw her down to him, but contact with him made her uneasy, and she eluded his grasp with a quick movement.

”You said you wanted me to hunt for the nightgown.”

She knelt at the trunk, which she herself had packed the night before, lifted the trays out, and from near the bottom fetched out the nebulous, lacy creation, which was one of the many things he had bought her before the wedding.

She looked about for a retreat, but nowhere on earth was there escape from that pair of eyes which swimming in desire followed her every movement.