"Ah!" says Lady Baltimore.

"It is true"--slowly. "It is equally true--that he--does not love me.

Let me then speak. All his sins, believe me, lie behind him. That woman, that friend of yours who told you of his renewed acquaintance with Madame Istray, lied to you! There was no truth in what she said!"

"I can quite understand your not wishing to believe in that story," says Lady Baltimore with an undisguised sneer.

"Like all good women, you can take pleasure in inflicting a wound," says Lady Swansdown, controlling herself admirably. "But do not let your detestation of me blind you to the fact that my words contain truth. If you will listen I can----"

"Not a word," says Lady Baltimore, making a movement with her hands as if to efface the other. "I will have none of your confidences."

"It seems to me"--quickly--"you are determined not to believe."

"You are at liberty to think as you will."

"The time may come," says Lady Swansdown, "when you will regret you did not listen to me to-day."

"Is that a threat?"

"No; but I am going. There will be no further opportunity for you to hear me."

"You must pardon me if I say that I am glad of that," says Lady Baltimore, her lips very white. "I Could have borne little more. Do what you will--go where you will--with whom you will" (with deliberate insult), "but at least spare me a repet.i.tion of such a scene as this."

She turns, and with an indescribably haughty gesture leaves the room.

CHAPTER XLV.

"The name of the slough was Despond."

Dancing is going on in the small drawing-room. A few night broughams are still arriving, and young girls, accompanied by their brothers only, are making the room look lovely. It is quite an impromptu affair, quite informal. d.i.c.ky Browne, altogether in his element, is flitting from flower to flower, saying beautiful nothings to any of the girls who are kind enough or silly enough to waste a moment on so irreclaimable a b.u.t.terfly.

He is not so entirely engrossed by his pleasing occupations, however, as to be lost to the more serious matters that are going on around him. He is specially struck by the fact that Lady Swansdown, who had been in charming spirits all through the afternoon, and afterward at dinner, is now dancing a great deal with Beauclerk, of all people, and making herself apparently very delightful to him. His own personal belief up to this had been that she detested Beauclerk, and now to see her smiling upon him and favoring him with waltz after waltz upsets d.i.c.ky's power of penetration to an almost fatal extent.

"I wonder what the deuce she's up to now," says he to himself, leaning against the wall behind him, and giving voice unconsciously to the thoughts within him.

"Eh?" says somebody at his ear.

He looks round hastily to find Miss Maliphant has come to anchor on his left, and that her eyes, too, are directed on Beauclerk, who with Lady Swansdown is standing at the lower end of the room.

"Eh, to you," says he brilliantly.

"I always rather fancied that Mr. Beauclerk and Lady Swansdown were antipathetic," says Miss Maliphant in her usual heavy, downright way.

"There was room for it," says Mr. Browne gloomily.

"For it?"

"Your fancy."

"Yes, so I think. Lady Swansdown has always seemed to me to be rather--raiher--eh?"

"Decidedly so," agrees Mr. Browne. "And as for Beauclerk, he is quite too dreadfully 'rather,' don't you think?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. He has often seemed to me a little light, but only on the surface."

"You've read him," says Mr. Browne with a confidential nod. "Light on the surface, but deep, deep as a draw well?"

"I don't think I mean what you do," says Miss Maliphant quickly.

"However, we are not discussing Mr. Beauclerk, beyond the fact that we wonder to see him so genial with Lady Swansdown. They used to be thoroughly antagonistic, and now--why they seem quite good friends, don't they? Quite thick, eh?" with her usual graceful phraseology.

"Thick as thieves in Vallambrosa," says Mr. Browne with increasing gloom. Miss Maliphant turns to regard him doubtfully.

"Leaves?" suggests she.

"Thieves," persists he immovably.

"Oh! Ah! It's a joke perhaps," says she, the doubt growing. Mr. Browne fixes a stern eye upon her.

"Is thy servant a dog?" says he, and stalks indignantly away, leaving Miss Maliphant in the throes of uncertainty.

"Yet I'm sure it wasn't the right word," says she to herself with a wonderful frown of perplexity. "However, I may be wrong. I often am.

And, after all, Spain we're told is full of 'em."

Whether "thieves" or "leaves" she doesn't explain, and presently her mind wanders entirely away from Mr. Browne's maundering to the subject that so much more nearly interests her. Beauclerk has not been quite so empresse in his manner to her to-night--not so altogether delightful. He has, indeed, it seems to her, shirked her society a good deal, and has not been so a.s.siduous about the scribbling of his name upon her card as usual. And then this sudden friendship with Lady Swansdown--what does he mean by that? What does she mean?

If she had only known. If the answer to her latter question had been given to her, her mind would have grown easier, and the idea of Lady Swansdown in the form of a rival would have been laid at rest forever.

As a fact, Lady Swansdown hardly understands herself to-night. That scene with her hostess has upset her mentally and bodily, and created in her a wild desire to get away from herself and from Baltimore at any cost. Some idle freak has induced her to use Beauclerk (who is detestable to her) as a safeguard from both, and he, unsettled in his own mind, and eager to come to conclusions with Joyce and her fortune, has lent himself to the wiles of his whilom foe, and is permiting himself to be charmed by her fascinating, if vagrant, mood.

Perhaps in all her life Lady Swansdown has never looked so lovely as to-night. Excitement and mental disturbance have lent a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes, a touch of color to her cheek. There is something electric about her that touches those who gaze, on her, and warns herself that a crisis is at hand.

Up to this she has been able to elude all Baltimore's attempts at conversation--has refused all his demands for a dance, yet this same knowledge that the night will not go by without a denouement of some kind between her and him is terribly present to her. To-night! The last night she will ever see him, in all human probability! The exaltation that enables her to endure this thought is fraught with such agony that, brave and determined as she is, it is almost too much for her.

Yet she--Isabel--she should learn that that old friendship between them was no fable. To-night it would bear fruit. False, she believed her--well, she should see.

In a way, she clung to Beauclerk as a means of escaping Baltimore--throwing out a thousand wiles to charm him to her side, and succeeding. Three times she had given a smiling "No" to Lord Baltimore's demand for a dance, and, regardless of opinion, had flung herself into a wild and open flirtation with Beauclerk.

But it is growing toward midnight, and her strength is failing her.

These people, will they never go, will she never be able to seek her own room, and solitude, and despair without calling down comment on her head, and giving Isabel--that cold woman--the chance of sneering at her weakness?

A sudden sense of the uselessness of it all has taken possession of her; her heart sinks. It is at this moment that Baltimore once more comes up to her.

"This dance?" says he. "It is half way through. You are not engaged, I suppose, as you are sitting down? May I have what remains of it?"

She makes a little gesture of acquiescence, and, rising, places her hand upon his arm.