Part 7 (1/2)
”I'm afraid you are not quite frank with me,” the young girl said; and her own frankness was a little painful.
”Tiny, dear, what a thing to say! What does it mean?”
Ruth employed for these words the injured tone.
”It means that you know as well as I do, Ruth, that it isn't pleasant for me to meet Lord Manister.”
”Was there something between you in Melbourne?” asked Ruth. ”I must say that n.o.body would have thought so from seeing you together last night.
And--and how was I to think so, when you have never told me anything about it?”
Christina laughed bitterly.
”When you have made a fool of yourself you don't go out of your way to talk about it, even to your own people. It is kind of you to pretend to know nothing about it--I am sure you mean it kindly; but I'm still surer that you have been told all there was to tell concerning Lord Manister and me. I don't mean by Herbert. He's close. But the mother must have written and told you something; it was only natural that she should do so.”
”She did tell me a little. Herbert has told me nothing. I tried to pump him,--I think you can't wonder at that,--but he refused to speak a word on the subject. He says he hates it.”
”He hates Lord Manister,” said Christina, smiling. ”It came round to him once that Lord Manister had called him a larrikin, and he has never forgiven him. But he has been less of a larrikin ever since. And, of course, that wasn't why he was so angry with me for dancing with Lord Manister last night; he was dreadfully angry with me as we drove home; but he is a very good boy to me, and there was something in what he said.”
”What made you dance with him?” Ruth said curiously.
”I was alone. I hadn't a partner. He asked me rather prettily--he always had pretty manners. You wouldn't have had me show him I cared, by snubbing him, would you?”
”No,” said Ruth thoughtfully; and suddenly she slipped from the sofa, and was kneeling on the hearthrug, with her brown eyes softly searching Christina's face and her lips whispering, ”Do you care, Tiny? _Do_ you care, Tiny, dear?”
Tiny snapped her fingers as she pushed back her chair.
”Not that much for anybody--much less for Lord Manister, and least of all for myself! Now don't you be too good to me, Ruth; if you are you'll only make me feel ungrateful, and I shall run away, because I'm not going to tell you another word about what's over and done with. I can't!
I have got over the whole thing, but it has been a sickener. It makes me sick to think about it. I don't want ever to speak of it again.”
”I understand,” said Ruth; but there was disappointment in her look and tone, and she added, ”I should like to have heard the truth, though; and no one can tell it me but you.”
”I thank Heaven for that!” cried Christina piously. ”The version out there was that he proposed to me and I accepted him, and then he bolted without even saying good-by. It's true that he didn't say good-by; the rest is not true. But you must just make it do.”
Her face was scarlet with the shame of it all; but there was no sign of weakness in the curling lips. She spoke bitterly, but not at all sadly, and her next words were still more suggestive of a wound to the vanity rather than to the heart.
”Does Erskine know?”
”Not a word.”
”Honestly?”
”Quite honestly; at least I have never mentioned it to him, and I don't think anybody else has, or he would have mentioned it to me.”
”Oh, Herbert wouldn't say anything. Herbert's very close. But--don't you two tell each other everything, Ruth?”
The young girl looked incredulous; the married woman smiled.
”Hardly everything, you know! Erskine has lots of relations himself, for instance, and I'm sure he wouldn't care to tell me the ins and outs of their private affairs, even if I cared to know them. It's just the same about you and your affairs, don't you see.”
”Except that he knows me so well,” Christina reflected aloud, with her eyes upon the fire. ”If I had a husband,” she added impulsively, ”I should like to tell him every mortal thing, whether I wanted to or not!
And I should like not to want to, but to be made. But that's because I should like above all things to be bossed!”