Ada Cambridge - A Mere Chance - A Novel. Vol. 2

"Yes."

"Not to dance with me? or merely not to dance waltzes?"

"Must I tell you?" she pleaded, looking up with appealing wet eyes into his hard and haughty face.

"Not unless you like, Miss Fetherstonhaugh. I think I understand perfectly."

"Oh, Mr. Dalrymple, I want to tell you about it, but I cannot. I am saying things already that I ought not to speak of."

"I don't think so," he replied quickly, suddenly softening until his voice was almost a caress, and set all her sensitive nerves thrilling like an Æolian harp when a strong wind blows over it. "It is in your nature to be honest, and to tell the truth. You are not afraid to tell the truth to me?"

"I would not tell you an untruth," she murmured, looking down; "but the truth – sometimes one must, sometimes one ought – to hide it. And I hoped you would not need to know about this."

"Why, how could I help knowing it? Did you think it likely I might by chance forget you were in the ball-room to-night?"

What she thought clearly "blazed itself in the heart's colours on her simple face." But she did not lift her eyes or speak.

"I am very glad I know," he continued, in a rather stern tone. "If you had done this to me, and never told me why – "

"I should have trusted to you to guess that it was not my fault, and to forgive me for it," the girl interposed, looking up at last with a flash in her soft eyes that, as well as her words, told him a great deal more than she had any idea of.

"It was really so?" he demanded eagerly. "It was not your own desire to disappoint me so terribly?"

"Oh, no ."

"If you had been left to yourself you would have danced with me?"

"Yes, of course."

"Quite willingly?"

"You know I would!"

Mr. Dalrymple drew a long breath. It was rather a critical moment. But he was no boy, at the mercy of the wind and waves of his own emotions, and Rachel's evident weakness of self-control was an appeal to his strength that he was not the man to disregard. Still it was wonderful how actively during these last few minutes he had come to hate Mr. Kingston, whom he had never seen.

"I suppose," he said presently, "I must not ask the reason for this preposterous proceeding?"

"Do not," she pleaded gently. "There is no reason, really. It is but Mr. Kingston's whim."

"And are you determined to sacrifice me to Mr. Kingston's whim?"

She did not speak, and he repeated his query in a more imperious fashion.

"Are you really going to throw me over altogether, Miss Fetherstonhaugh? I only want to know."

She looked up at him piteously, and he softened at once.

"Tell me what I am to do," he said, in a low voice. " Do you wish me not to ask you for any dances? It is a horrible thing – it is enough to make me wish I had gone to Queensland on Monday, after all – but I will not bother you. Tell me, am I not to ask you at all?"

"If you please," she whispered with a quick sigh, full of despairing resignation. "I am very sorry, but it is right to do what Mr. Kingston wishes."

"That is not my view in this case. However, it is right for me to do what you wish. And I will, though it is very hard."

Here Rachel, feeling all her body like one great beating heart, moved away to the door, driven by a stern sense of social duty.

Her companion did not follow her, and she paused on the threshold, turned round, and then suddenly hurried back to him.

"Mr. Dalrymple," she said, putting out her hand with an impulsive gesture, "do not wish you had gone to Queensland instead of coming here to-night. If you do I shall be miserable !"

He seized her hand immediately, and stooping his tall head at the same moment, brushed it with his moustache. Then, looking up into her scared face, he said – like a man binding himself by some terrible oath:

" That I never will."

Once before in that room they had touched the point where not only mere acquaintance but warmest friendship ends. Then it had been to her a new, incomprehensible experience; now she could not help seeing the reason and the meaning of it, though, perhaps, not so clearly as he.

In a moment she had drawn her hand away, and like a bird frightened from its nest, had vanished out of his sight, leaving him – thoroughly aroused from his normal impassiveness – gazing at the empty doorway behind her.

When they met again, ten minutes afterwards, it was in the drawing-room, which was crowded with people; and through all the crush and noise, she was as acutely conscious of his presence as if he alone had been there.

She moved about with tremulous restlessness and downcast eyes; afraid to look at him – afraid he should look at her; paying her little civilities mechanically, and conducting herself generally, to her aunt's extreme annoyance, more like a bashful schoolgirl and a poor relation than ever.

Mr. Kingston, doing his best to fascinate Miss Hale, who stood beside him, giggling and simpering and twiddling her watch-chain, looked anxiously at his little sweetheart when she entered, thought he saw signs of his own handiwork in her disturbed and downcast face, called her to him, and until the great tea-dinner was over, and they all had to disperse to dress, compassed her with devout attentions, intended to assure her of his royal forgiveness and favour.

But he did not remove the prohibition, which made her more and more resentful as she continued to think about it, and less and less responsive to his ostentatious "kindness;" and he treated Mr. Dalrymple – when he condescended to acknowledge his presence at all – with a supercilious rudeness that Mr. Thornley, in conjugal confidence, declared to be "very bad form," and that prompted the gentle Lucilla to be "nicer" to the younger man than Rachel had ever seen her. He was so open in his hostility that it was generally noticed and talked of (and the cause of it more or less correctly surmised).

The only person who seemed absolutely indifferent to it and to him was Mr. Dalrymple himself; and in his secret heart he was much more glad than angry to have earned such pronounced dislike from such a quarter, though as impatient of what he called "impudence" as anybody.

That Adelonga ball was a memorable event to most of the people that it gathered together – as what ball is not? Mr. Thornley celebrated the coming of age of his son and heir, to begin with. Mrs. Thornley appeared for the first time, "officially," after the birth of her baby, who was the hero of all occasions to her , and inaugurated a great "county" reputation as a charming hostess and woman.

Mrs. Hardy got her best point lace irretrievably ruined by catching it on an unprotected corner of the wire-netting upon which Rachel had worked her decorations; and she also saw the lamentable frustration of several wise plans that she had made.

Two young people became engaged; others, male and female, fell in love, or began those pleasant flirtations which led to love eventually.

Miss Hale on the other hand, quarrelled with Mr. Lessel, who took upon himself to object to her extravagant appreciation of Mr. Kingston's rather extravagant attentions; and their engagement was broken off.

Mr. Lessel at the same time captivated the fancy of a charming young lady, only daughter of the Adelonga family doctor, resident in the township close by, who was destined in less than twelve months to be his wife.

Mr. Kingston, surfeited with balls, had a deeper interest in this one than in any of the hundreds that he had attended in the course of a long and gay career.

Never before had he admired a pretty woman with such ferocious sincerity as he admired his little Rachel to-night; never before had he used such rude tactics to make the object of his affections jealous – thereby to subdue rebellion in her; never before had he been so defied and circumvented by a being in female shape as he was to-night by this presumptive little nobody, whom he had singled out for honour, and who was bound to honour him, and his lightest wish.