that he was making a mistake; but he never realized it with such painful clearness as he did this evening. He was filled with a sort of blind terror. He cursed the fate which had taken him to the Charity-Bazaar at which he had first come under the notice of Lady Kimbuck. The fatuous snobbishness which had made him leap at her invitation to spend a few days at Evenwood Towers he regretted; but for that he blamed himself less. Further acquaintance with Lady Kimbuck had convinced him that if she had wanted him, she would have got him somehow, whether he had accepted or refused.
What he really blamed himself for was his mad proposal. There had been no need for it. True, Lady Eva had created a riot of burning emotions in his breast from the moment they met; but he should have had the sense to realize that she was not the right mate for him, even tho he might have a quarter of a million tucked away in gilt- edged securities. Their lives could not possibly mix. He was a commonplace young man with a fondness for the pleasures of the people. He liked cheap papers, picture-palaces, and Association football. Merely to think of Association football in connection with her was enough to make the folly of his conduct clear. He ought to have been content to worship her from afar as some inaccessible goddess.
A light step outside the door made his heart stop beating.
“I’ve just looked in to say good night, Mr.—er—Roland,” she said, holding out her hand. “Do excuse me. I’ve got such a headache.”
“Oh, yes, rather; I’m awfully sorry.”
If there was one person in the world Roland despised and hated at that moment, it was himself.
“Are you going out with the guns to-morrow?” asked Lady Eva languidly.
“Oh, yes, rather! I mean, no. I’m afraid I don’t shoot.”
The back of his neck began to glow. He had no illusions about himself. He was the biggest ass in Christendom.
“Perhaps you’d like to play a round of golf, then?”
“Oh, yes, rather! I mean, no.” There it was again, that awful phrase. He was certain he had not intended to utter it. She must be thinking him a perfect lunatic. “I don’t play golf.”
They stood looking at each other for a moment. It seemed to Roland that her gaze was partly contemptuous, partly pitying. He longed to tell her that, tho she had happened to pick on his weak points in the realm of sport, there were things he could do. An insane desire came upon him to babble about his school football team. Should he ask her to feel his quite respectable biceps? No.
“Never mind,” she said, kindly. “I daresay we shall think of something to amuse you.”
She held out her hand again. He took it in his for the briefest possible instant, painfully conscious the while that his own hand was clammy from the emotion through which he had been passing.
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
Thank Heaven, she was gone. That let him out for another twelve hours at least.
A quarter of an hour later found Roland still sitting, where she had left him, his head in his hands. The groan of an overwrought soul escaped him.
“I can’t do it!”
He sprang to his feet.
“I won’t do it.”
A smooth voice from behind him spoke.
“I think you are quite right, sir—if I may make the remark.”
Roland had hardly ever been so startled in his life. In the first place, he was not aware of having uttered his thoughts aloud; in the second, he had imagined that he was alone in the room. And so, a moment before, he had been.
But the owner of the voice possessed, among other qualities, the cat-like faculty of entering a room perfectly noiselessly—a fact which had won for him, in the course of a long career in the service of the best families, the flattering position of star witness in a number of England’s raciest divorce-cases.
Mr. Teal, the butler—for it was no less a celebrity who had broken in on Roland’s reverie—was a long, thin man of a somewhat priestly cast of countenance. He lacked that air of reproving hauteur which many butlers possess, and it was for this reason that Roland had felt drawn to him during the black days of his stay at Evenwood Towers. Teal had been uncommonly nice to him on the whole. He had seemed to Roland, stricken by interviews with his host and Lady Kimbuck, the only human thing in the place.
He liked Teal. On the other hand, Teal was certainly taking a liberty. He could, if he so pleased, tell Teal to go to the deuce. Technically, he had the right to freeze Teal with a look.
He did neither of these things. He was feeling very lonely and very forlorn in a strange and depressing world, and Teal’s voice and manner were soothing.
“Hearing you speak, and seeing nobody else in the room,” went on the butler, “I thought for a moment that you were addressing me.”
This was not true, and Roland knew it was not true. Instinct told him that Teal knew that he knew it was not true; but he did not press the point.
“What do you mean—you think I am quite right?” he said. “You don’t know what I was thinking about.”
Teal smiled indulgently.
“On the contrary, sir. A child could have guessed it. You have just come to the decision—in my opinion a thoroughly sensible one—that your engagement to her ladyship can not be allowed to go on. You are quite right, sir. It won’t do.”
