Gilbert in love was something of a boy; an idealist, a dreamer. Other grown men have shared his weakness, there are unsuspected wells of romance in the most practical of men. So he was content with his dreams, weaving this and that story of sweet surrender in his inmost heart. He loved her, completely, absorbingly. To him she was a divine and a fragrant thing.
He had taken her hand again in his, and realised with pain, which was tinctured with amusement that made it bearable, that she was seeking to disengage herself, when Mrs. Cathcart came into the room.
She was a tall woman, still beautiful, though age had given her a certain angularity. The ravages of time had made it necessary for her to seek artificial aid for the strengthening of her attractions. Her mouth was thin and straight and uncompromising, her chin too bony to be beautiful. She smiled as she rustled across the room and offered her gloved hand to the young man.
“You’re early, Gilbert,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied awkwardly. Here was the opportunity which he sought, yet he experienced some reluctance in availing himself of the chance.
He had released the girl as the door opened, and she had instinctively taken a step backward, and stood with her hands behind her, regarding him gravely and intently.
“Really,” he said, “I wanted to see you.”
“To see me?” asked Mrs. Cathcart archly. “No, surely not me!”
Her smile comprehended the girl and the young man. For some reason which he could not appreciate at the moment Gilbert felt uncomfortable.
“Yes, it was to see you,” he said, “but it isn’t remarkable at this particular period of time.”
He smiled again.
She held up a warning finger.
“You must not bother about any of the arrangements. I want you to leave that entirely to me. You will find you have no cause to complain.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that,” he said hastily, “it was something more—more—”
He hesitated. He wanted to convey to her the gravity of the business he had in hand. And even as he approached the question of an interview, a dim realisation came to him of the difficulty of his position. How could he suggest to this woman, who had been all kindness and all sweetness to him, that he suspected her of motives which did credit neither to her head nor her heart? How could he broach the subject of his poverty to one who had not once but a hundred times confided to him that his expectations and the question of his future wealth were the only drawbacks to what she had described as an ideal love marriage?
“I almost wish you were poor, Gilbert,” she had said. “I think riches are an awful handicap to young people circumstanced as you and Edith will be.”
She had conveyed this suspicion of his wealth more than once. And yet, at a chance word from Leslie, he had doubted the purity of her motives! He remembered with a growing irritation that it had been Mrs. Cathcart who had made the marriage possible; the vulgar-minded might even have gone further, and suggested that she had thrown Edith at his head. There was plenty of groundwork for Leslie’s suspicion, he thought, as he looked at the tall, stylish woman before him. Only he felt ashamed that he had listened to the insidious suggestion.
“Could you give me a quarter of an hour—” He stopped. He was going to say “before dinner,” but thought that possibly an interview after the meal would be less liable to interruption.
“—after dinner?”
“With pleasure,” she smiled. “What are you going to do? Confess some of the irregularities of your youth?”
He shook his head with a little grimace.
“You may be sure I shall never tell you those,” he said.
“Then I will see you after dinner,” she assented. “There are a lot of people coming tonight, and I am simply up to my eyes in work. You bridegrooms,” she patted his shoulder with her fan reproachfully, “have no idea what chaos you bring into the domestic life of your unfortunate relatives of the future.”
Edith stood aloof, in the attitude she had adopted when he had released her, watchful, curious, in the scene, but not of it. It was an effect which the presence of Mrs. Cathcart invariably produced upon her daughter. It was not an obliteration, not exactly an eclipse, as the puzzled Gilbert had often observed. It was as though the entrance of one character of a drama were followed by the immediate exit of her who had previously occupied the scene. He pictured Edith waiting at the wings for a cue which would bring her into active existence again, and that cue was invariably the retirement of her mother.
“There are quite a number of nice people coming tonight, Gilbert,” said Mrs. Cathcart, glancing at a slip of paper in her hand. “There are some you don’t know, and some I want you very much to meet. I am sure you will like dear Dr. Cassylis—”
A smothered exclamation caught her ear, and she looked up sharply. Gilbert’s face was set: it was void of all expression. The girl saw the mask and wondered.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Cathcart.
“Nothing,” said Gilbert steadily, “you were talking about your guests.”
“I was saying that you must meet Dr. Barclay-Seymour—he is a most charming man. I don’t think you know him?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“Well, you ought to,” she said. “He’s a dear friend of mine, and why on earth he practises in Leeds instead of maintaining an establishment in Harley Street I haven’t the slightest idea. The ways of men are beyond finding out. Then there is. …”
She reeled off a list of names, some of which Gilbert knew.
“What is the time?” she asked suddenly. Gilbert
