"Exactly. Requiescat. Let's see if we can get this neurasthenic down to the car without waking him."

CHAPTER XXVII.

AN INTERIM REPORT.

Though maid to a lady accounted very fine, Suzanne, in presence of beauty unadorned, was a simple and kind-hearted enthusiast in her art.

Before lunch-time next day she had done so well for Amaryllis out of Lady Elizabeth Bruffin's wardrobe, that she declared, with conviction to fill up the gap in evidence, "_que mademoiselle n'a jamais pu paraitre plus seduisante, plus pimpante qu'aujourd'hui_."

"How can she know that?" asked Amaryllis laughing.

"Because nothing possible could be, you pretty creature," said Lady Elizabeth, glowing with pleasure in the success of her nursing and in the quality of d.i.c.k Bellamy's conquest.

She had, indeed, good reason: eleven hours' sleep, with redundant happiness and bodily health as elastic as a child's, had made Amaryllis scarcely more delightful to her new friends' eyes than to her own. For on this Sunday morning she looked into her gla.s.s for the first time through a man's eyes.

In spite of her beauty, however, and of her joy in the man who was to see and praise it, there was yet in her heart a p.r.i.c.king as of conscience.

In the night there had come to her, for the first time since d.i.c.k had saved her from the Dutchwoman and her knife, the memory of Randal Bellamy; of his kindness, of his favour with her father and of his love for herself.

She did not now feel as she had felt in his study before she fell asleep; she did not even define the feeling which had then made her tears flow; and she understood, with the memory of d.i.c.k's kisses on her face, that Randal was not wounded as d.i.c.k would have been in losing her.

She had not wronged Randal, nor had she any sense of wrong-doing; for to love d.i.c.k was a natural thing to do--and a wise thing. It was even a praiseworthy deed: for that this wonderful d.i.c.k of all men should go without any smallest thing which he desired, would have been wicked indeed.

The sting was this: Randal did not yet know that she was d.i.c.k's, nor d.i.c.k that Randal would have had her his own. And she believed that it would hurt Randal less in the end to learn the tremendous news from her mouth than from her father's, d.i.c.k's or Lady Elizabeth's; and from Lady Elizabeth she knew she could not keep it long, having a suspicion, even, that she knew it already.

She must see Randal before d.i.c.k should come to her. She must tell Randal the most wonderful and most inevitable thing of that terrible and glorious yesterday. And Randal must decide whether d.i.c.k was to know what Randal had asked and offered. And if d.i.c.k was to know, Randal must decide by whom, and when.

If Randal wished it hidden, she could never tell it--not even to d.i.c.k.

For Amaryllis, even before she had "put her hair up," had learned to hate the woman who tries to hide her nakedness with a belt of scalps.

As these thoughts ran through her head, Amaryllis frowned between her eyebrows.

"A fly in the ointment, after all?" asked Lady Elizabeth, smiling so that one knew there was none in hers.

"Only something I remembered. I want----"

"Won't ask, shan't have," said Lady Elizabeth.

"Will Sir Randal Bellamy be here to lunch?" asked the girl.

"I hope so, my dear. He's with d.i.c.k--or was--sitting on the bed to keep him down till the doctor came. He's like a hen with one chick over that brother of his."

And Lady Elizabeth Bruffin laughed.

"I think it's--it's beautiful," said Amaryllis, with a shade of indignation in her voice.

"Yes--quite. That's why I laughed."

"I know," replied the girl, unwrinkling her forehead. "I often want to laugh for that." And then, after a moment's pause, she added: "Please, I want to speak to Sir Randal for a moment, before lunch."

"You shall. Heroines must have things made smooth for them, mustn't they, at the end of the book?"

And she took the girl, fresh from Suzanne's finishing touches, to George's study.

"George won't be coming in for half an hour, dear," she said. "There are heaps of papers and books, but no looking-gla.s.s. So you'll be able to forget your pretty self for a few minutes."

And off went the fairy G.o.dmother--to meet Sir Randal Bellamy on the stairs.

"But you're staying to lunch," she expostulated.

"If you say so, of course I am," said Randal.

"I've left Amaryllis in George's study. She wants you to see I have looked after her as well as if she'd been at home with her father and you."

She pa.s.sed him, but turned two steps above.

"I wish you'd seen Dr. Caldegard looking at her fast asleep in bed last night," she said in a low voice, very tender. "It was a picture--the kind one keeps."

"Yes," said Randal. "I was in the other room, you know, looking at mine."

And he went down the stair, wondering how a woman he had seen last night for the first time had managed to get that sentimental speech out of him.

Amaryllis rose as he entered, and almost ran to meet him.

"Oh, Randal!" she cried.

He had known his gentle doom on the Friday; and her "Randal," _tout court_, sealed it, for never had she used his name so to him before. It came now, he knew, not in his own right, but through d.i.c.k.

In a single emotion, he was sorry and glad--more glad, he told himself, than sorry. For the sadness seemed to have been with him a long time, while the joy was new.

A little while she babbled of the trouble and pain she had given them.

"You and poor dad! If only I could have yelled out in time!"

"To get a knife in you, my dear--no, it's been all just right. Why, we should never have got the Dope of the G.o.ds back, without you."

And when she laughed, he told her how her father had growled: "Oh, d.a.m.n the Ambrotox!" and how he had lectured the potentate on nervous exhaustion.

But when a little silence fell between them, Amaryllis took a deep breath and plunged, saying in a half-stifled voice, "I want to tell you something."

"Tell away, child," he replied, smiling benignantly on her, though his heart beat heavily, telling him her tale beforehand.

"It's--it's d.i.c.k," she said, and broke down.

"d.i.c.k?" he responded. "Of course it's d.i.c.k--and d.i.c.k it is going to be; d.i.c.k for breakfast, d.i.c.k for lunch, and d.i.c.k for dinner."