"EDITH will be down in a very few moments," Miss Madden assured Thorpe that evening, when he entered the drawing-room of the house she had taken in Grafton Street.
He looked into her eyes and smiled, as he bowed over the hand she extended to him. His glance expressed with forceful directness his thought: "Ah, then she has told you!"The complacent consciousness of producing a fine effect in evening-clothes had given to Mr. Stormont Thorpe habitually now a mildness of manner, after the dressing hour, which was lacking to his deportment in the day-time.
The conventional attire of ceremony, juggled in the hands of an inspired tailor, had been brought to lend to his ponderous figure a dignity, and even something of a grace, which the man within assimilated and made his own.
It was an equable and rather amiable Thorpe whom people encountered after nightfall--a gentleman who looked impressive enough to have powerful performances believed of him, yet seemed withal an approachable and easy-going person.
Men who saw him at midnight or later spoke of him to their womenkind with a certain significant reserve, in which trained womankind read the suggestion that the "Rubber King"drank a good deal, and was probably not wholly nice in his cups.
This, however, could not be said to render him less interesting in any eyes. There was indeed about it the implication of a generous nature, or at the least of a blind side--and it is not unpleasant to discover these attributes in a new man who has made his half-million, and has, or may have, countless favours to bestow.
It was as if his tongue instead of his eyes had uttered the exclamation--"Ah, then she has told you!"--for Miss Madden took it as having been spoken. "I'm not disposed to pretend that I'm overjoyed about it, you know,"she said to him bluntly, as their hands dropped, and they stood facing each other. "If I said I congratulated you, it would be only the emptiest form. And I hate empty forms.""Why should you think that I won't make a good husband?"Thorpe asked the question with a good-natured if peremptory frankness which came most readily to him in the presence of this American lady, herself so outspoken and masterful.
"I don't know that I specially doubt it," she replied.
"I suppose any man has in him the makings of what is called a good husband--if the conditions are sufficiently propitious.""Well then--what's the matter with the conditions?"he demanded, jocosely.
Miss Madden shrugged her shoulders slightly. Thorpe noted the somewhat luxuriant curves of these splendid shoulders, and the creamy whiteness of the skin, upon which, round the full throat, a chain of diamonds lay as upon satin--and recalled that he had not seen her before in what he phrased to himself as so much low-necked dress.
The deep fire-gleam in her broad plaits of hair gave a wonderful brilliancy to this colouring of brow and throat and bosom. He marvelled at himself for discovering only now that she also was beautiful--and then thrilled with pride at the thought that henceforth his life might be passed altogether among beautiful women, radiant in gems and costly fabrics, who would smile upon him at his command.
"Oh, I have no wish to be a kill-joy," she protested.
"I'm sure I hope all manner of good results from the--the experiment."
"I suppose that's what it comes to," he said, meditatively.
"It's all an experiment. Every marriage in the world must be that--neither more nor less.""With all the experience of the ages against its coming out right." She had turned to move toward a chair, but looked now over her shoulder at him. "Have you ever seen what seemed to you an absolutely happy marriage in your life?"Upon reflection he shook his head. "I don't recall one on the spur of the minute," he confessed.
"Not the kind, I mean, that you read about in books.
But I've seen plenty where the couple got along together in a good, easy, comfortable sort of way, without a notion of any sort of unpleasantness. It's people who marry too young who do most of the fighting, I imagine.
After people have got to a sensible age, and know what they want and what they can get along without, why then there's no reason for any trouble. We don't start out with any school-boy and school-girl moonshine""Oh, there's a good deal to be said for the moonshine,"she interrupted him, as she sank upon the sofa.
"Why certainly," he assented, amiably, as he stood looking down at her. "The more there is of it, the better--if it comes naturally, and people know enough to understand that it is moonshine, and isn't the be-all and end-all of everything.""There's a lover for you!" Miss Madden cried, with mirth and derision mingled in her laugh.
"Don't you worry about me," he told her. "I'm a good enough lover, all right. And when you come to that, if Edith is satisfied, I don't precisely see what----""What business it is of mine?" she finished the sentence for him. "You're entirely right. As you say, IF she's satisfied, no one else has anything to do with it.""But have you got any right to assume that she isn't satisfied?" he asked her with swift directness--"or any reason for supposing it?"Miss Madden shook her head, but the negation seemed qualified by the whimsical smile she gave him. "None whatever,"she said--and on the instant the talk was extinguished by the entrance of Lady Cressage.
Thorpe's vision was flooded with the perception of his rare fortune as he went to meet her. He took the hand she offered, and looked into the smile of her greeting, and could say nothing. Her beauty had gathered to it new forces in his eyes--forces which dazzled and troubled his glance. The thought that this exquisite being--this ineffable compound of feeling and fine nerves and sweet wisdom and wit and loveliness--belonged to him seemed too vast for the capacity of his mind.
He could not keep himself from trembling a little, and from diverting to a screen beyond her shoulder a gaze which he felt to be overtly dimmed and embarrassed.
