The Eagle's Shadow

them that a maid waiting in the springtide for the man she loves is necessarily happy and very rarely puzzles her head over the scientific reason for it.

XXI

But ten minutes later she saw Mr. Woods in the distance striding across the sunlit terraces, and was seized with a conviction that their interview was likely to prove a stormy one. There was an ominous stiffness in his gait.

'Oh, dear, dear!' Miss Hugonin wailed; 'he's in a temper now, and he'll probably be just as disagreeable as it's possible for any one to be. I do wish men weren't so unreasonable! He looks exactly like a big, blue-eyed thunder- cloud just now—just now, when I'm sure he has every cause in the world to be very much pleased—after all I've done for him. He makes me awfully tired. I think he's very ungrateful. I—I think I'm rather afraid.'

In fact, she was. Now that the meeting she had anticipated these twelve hours past was actually at hand, there woke in her breast an unreasoning panic. Miss Hugonin considered, and caught up her skirts, and whisked into the summer-house, and there sat down in the darkest corner and devoutly wished Mr. Woods in Crim Tartary, or Jericho, or, in a word, any region other than the gardens of Selwoode.

Billy came presently to the opening in the hedge and stared at the deserted bench. He was undeniably in a temper. But, then, how becoming it was! thought someone.

'Miss Hugonin!' he said, coldly.

Evidently (thought someone) he intends to be just as nasty as possible.

'Peggy!' said Mr. Woods, after a little.

Perhaps (thought someone) he won't be very nasty.

'Dear Peggy!' said Mr. Woods, in his most conciliatory tone.

Someone rearranged her hair complacently.

But there was no answer, save the irresponsible chattering of the birds, and with a sigh Billy turned upon his heel.

Then, by the oddest chance in the world, Margaret coughed.

I dare say it was damp in the summer-house; or perhaps it was caused by some passing bronchial irritation; or perhaps, incredible as it may seem, she coughed to show him where she was. But I scarcely think so, because Margaret insisted afterward—very positively, too—that she didn't cough at all.

XXII

'Well!' Mr. Woods observed, lengthening the word somewhat.

In the intimate half-light of the summer-house, he loomed prodigiously big. He was gazing downward in careful consideration of three fat tortoise-shell pins and a surprising quantity of gold hair, which was practically all that he could see of Miss Hugonin's person; for that young lady had suddenly become a limp mass of abashed violet ruffles, and had discovered new and irresistible attractions in the mosaics about her feet.

Billy's arms were crossed on his breast and his right hand caressed his chin meditatively. By and bye, 'I wonder, now,' he reflected, aloud, 'if you can give any reason—any possible reason—why you shouldn't be locked up in the nearest sanatorium?'

'You needn't be rude, you know,' a voice observed from the neighbourhood of the ruffles, 'because there isn't anything you can do about it.'

Mr. Woods ventured a series of inarticulate observations. 'But why?' he concluded, desperately. 'But why, Peggy?—in Heaven's name, what's the meaning of all this?'

She looked up. Billy was aware of two large blue stars; his heart leapt; and then he recalled a pair of gray- green eyes that had regarded him in much the same fashion not long ago, and he groaned.

'I was unfair to you last night,' she said, and the ring of her odd, deep voice, and the richness and sweetness of it, moved him to faint longing, to a sick heart-hunger. It was tremulous, too, and very tender. 'Yes, I was unutterably unfair, Billy. You asked me to marry you when you thought I was a beggar, and—and Uncle Fred ought to have left you the money. It was on account of me that he didn't, you know. I really owed it to you. And after the way I talked to you—so long as I had the money—I—and, anyhow, its very disagreeable and eccentric and horrid of you to object to being rich!' Margaret concluded, somewhat incoherently.

She had not thought it would be like this. He seemed so stern.

But, 'Isn't that exactly like her?' Mr. Woods was demanding of his soul. 'She thinks she has been unfair to me—to me, whom she doesn't care a button for, mind you. So she hands over a fortune to make up for it, simply because that's the first means that comes to hand! Now, isn't that perfectly unreasonable, and fantastic, and magnificent, and incredible?—in short, isn't that Peggy all over? Why, God bless her, her heart's bigger than a barn-door! Oh, it's no wonder that fellow Kennaston was grinning just now when he sent me to her! He can afford to grin.'

Aloud, he stated, 'You're an angel, Peggy that's what you are. I've always suspected it, and I'm glad to know it now for a fact. But in this prosaic world not even angels are allowed to burn up wills for recreation. Why, bless my soul, child, you—why, there's no telling what trouble you might have gotten into!'

Miss Hugonin pouted. 'You needn't be such a grandfather,' she suggested, helpfully.

'But it's a serious business,' he insisted. At this point Billy began to object to her pouting as distracting one's mind from the subject under discussion. 'It—why, it's——'

'It's what?' she pouted, even more rebelliously.

'Crimson,' said Mr. Woods, considering—'oh, the very deepest, duskiest crimson such as you can't get in tubes. It's a colour was never mixed on any palette. It's—eh? Oh, I beg your pardon.'

'I think you ought to,' said Margaret, primly. Nevertheless, she had brightened considerably.

'Of course,' Mr. Woods continued with a fine colour, 'I can't take the money. That's absurd.'

'Is it?' she queried, idly. 'Now, I wonder how you're going to help yourself?'

'Simplest thing in the world,' he assured her. 'You see this match, don't you, Peggy? Well, now you're going to give me that paper I see in that bag-thing at your waist, and I'm going to burn it till it's all nice, soft, feathery ashes that can't ever be probated. And then the first will, which is practically the same as the last, will be allowed to stand, and I'll tell your father all about the affair, because he ought to know, and you'll have to settle with those colleges. And in that way,' Mr. Woods submitted, 'Uncle Fred's last wishes will be carried out just as he expressed them, and there needn't be any trouble—none at all. So give me the will, Peggy?'

It is curious what a trivial matter love makes of felony.

Margaret's heart sank.

However, 'Yes?' said she, encouragingly; 'and what do you intend doing afterward?—'

'I—I shall probably live abroad,' said Billy. 'Cheaper, you know.'

 

And here (he thought) was an excellent, an undreamed-of opportunity to inform her of his engagement. He had much better tell her now and have done. Mr. Woods opened his mouth and looked at Margaret, and closed it. Again she was pouting in a fashion that distracted one's mind.

'That would be most unattractive,' said Miss Hugonin, calmly. 'You're very stupid, Billy, to think of living abroad. Billy, I think you're almost as stupid as I am. I've been very stupid, Billy. I thought I liked Mr. Kennaston. I don't, Billy—not that way. I've just told him so. I'm not—I'm not engaged to anybody now, Billy. But wasn't it stupid of me to make such a mistake, Billy?'

That was a very interesting mosaic there in the summer-house.

'I don't understand,' said Mr. Woods. His voice shook, and his hands lifted a little toward her and trembled.