"Very well, then, we'll begin again. How did you manage to get such a cold, Gwen?"

"I haven't a cold."

"Indeed! I thought your eyes were running."

She made no reply. Lawrence drew near and leaned on the table beside her.

"What's the matter, chum?" he said coaxingly.

"Oh! just everything," she broke out. "I can't think why Heaven made men such fools."

"Admirers getting entangled?" he asked.

"Yes," pettishly. "I believe Captain O'Connor is going to make Lord Selloyd fight."

"You needn't worry. Woolly lambs don't fight--they run away."

"Oh, but can't you see how silly it is!" she cried in exasperation. "It is bound to get round to the clubs, and then to the women, and mother will be furious. I must make them come to their senses somehow."

"What's it all about?"

"Oh, I don't know," expressively. "A storm in a tea-cup, of course, but you Irishmen are so ridiculously hot-headed. Take a hot-headed Irishman and an Englishman who is a fool, and they're sure to do something silly.

"I don't mind about them," running on, "but I do want to keep it from mother and father. You see, they give me a lot of liberty, and they'll think I've been abusing it, and it really wasn't my fault this time,"

and the tears sprang to her eyes again.

"What happened?"

"Well, it was at the Inglis' dance. Lord Selloyd would follow me about, and Captain O'Connor got angry. I think they had both had too much champagne for supper, and in the end they had a row."

"Probably it has all blown over by now."

"No, it hasn't. They will both be at the Markhams' to-night, and it will be very unpleasant."

"I shall be there," said Lawrence. "Can't I see you through!"

Gwen was thoughtful a few moments, and suddenly she looked up with an idea.

"Look here, Lawrence," she said, "if I could once for all convince both of them it wasn't the least use thinking any more about me, I believe they'd just leave Calcutta, and no one would ever know there had been this bother."

"And can't you?"

"I can't by merely talking. I must try and prove it--and I have an idea, Lawrence."

"Say on."

"If I could tell them I was engaged it would just simplify everything."

Lawrence nodded, to show he was following, and waited. "I can only do that with someone to corroborate it, and I've been thinking, Lawrence, if you wouldn't mind helping me, you're just the man."

"I am ready for anything. What do you want?"

"I want you to be secretly engaged to me for this evening."

Lawrence looked up, and there was amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes.

"It's a splendid idea," she exclaimed, warming to her subject. "I shall tell Captain O'Connor and make him understand it can't be announced for some particular reason, and he'll be flattered at being told, and just keep it to himself and say no more. You must, of course, be there yourself to sanction it or he might not believe it."

Gwen talked on, and Lawrence listened, falling in with her plans easily enough because he saw no harm in the trick and it was the least trouble.

When Mrs Carew joined them later, Gwen was radiant again and rather looking forward to her evening. Afterward she was still more radiant, for everything had gone well. Captain O'Connor, a fiery young officer, spending a month's leave in Calcutta before starting to England, was quickly brought to reason by Gwen's charming way of confiding in him, and, while announcing his intention of running himself through, in the same moment grasped Lawrence's hand, and told him he was the luckiest chap on earth.

The next morning he did actually start for England, a week sooner than he intended, leaving Lord Selloyd to congratulate himself upon having got out of the quarrel so simply.

The incident dispersed Gwen's pa.s.sing displeasure with Lawrence also, and she condescended once more to mention the subject of the Adairs, asking him if he had decided what to do. He was standing with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window, and for a moment he did not reply. Gwen came and leaned against the window-frame beside him.

"If you go, Lawrie, are you quite certain it would have to be the pretty one?" she asked.

"Yes--quite," he answered.

"Then stay here. I'm awfully sorry for them--at least I'm sorry for Paddy," she continued, as he did not speak, "but I'm absolutely certain it would be a mistake for you to marry the other one. Deep down in your heart you think so yourself, don't you?"

"I have long been under the impression that I had no heart."

"Rubbish! Why, that's what people say about me, and do you think I don't know better! When 'John Right' comes along you'll all see I've got just as much heart as any one else, but until he does--a short life and a merry one, say I! That's how it will be with you, Lawrie. When Mary Jane Right turns up you'll tear your hair--what there is of it--and stamp, and rave, and storm, just like any other love-sick male. Till then, if it pleases you to be cynical and _blase_, and all that nonsense, why, be cynical and _blase_; it doesn't hurt any one else--in fact, it's rather amusing," and she rested her hand on his arm and looked into his face with roguish, laughing eyes. "I'd have just loved to have a brother," she said, "but, like that nice old General Adair who wanted a son, I guess I've got the next best thing."

So, in the end, Lawrence did not return to England, and nothing happened to avert the hard change for Paddy and Eileen and their mother.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

PADDY MAKES HER COUSIN'S ACQUAINTANCE.

One of the first things Paddy did when she got to London was to quarrel with her cousin, Basil Adair. Basil was a medical student, a young man who had somehow got a notion that the world would be in no end of a queer fix without him; but that, as long as he remained in it, he had no occasion to work or strive after anything except having a good time, spending a great deal of money and talking big. He was rather curious about this new cousin who was coming to stay a few weeks with them, and inclined to be pleased at the idea of some one quite fresh to impress daily with his new clothes, immaculate boots, glossy head-gear, and generally magnificent appearance. When he saw a black-robed, sallow-faced girl, with serious eyes and badly dressed hair, he was inclined to be satirical. Paddy's mourning, hastily procured in Newry, did not meet with his approval at all, as indeed it was hardly likely to do, and black was the most unbecoming colour she could possibly wear.

Still, he had a great idea of always doing the correct thing, so he came home to dinner the flint evening, and addressed various polite remarks to her, in a grandiloquent, not to say condescending, tone.

Paddy looked at him as if he were a clothes-horse, and Basil was not pleased. Half divining the same, Paddy looked again. After dinner, when she had the opportunity of a nearer inspection, she looked with interest at the immaculate patent-leather boots, and took a calm survey of the whole effect. Basil felt he was making an impression, and though he thought she was very plain and dowdy, he was a young man who could not have resisted trying to make an impression on a crossing sweeper.

He took up his stand on the hearthrug, with his legs astride and his hands behind him, and looked down at her over his two-and-a-half-inch collar, prepared to continue his magnanimity.

"Er--you don't know London, I believe--er--Miss Adair?" he began.

"I have been here before," Paddy answered. "I was at school here for about four months."

"It is unfortunate," he continued, "that father's practice happens to be--er--in Shepherd's Bush, and that, therefore, you should have to become acquainted with London from such a--er--plebeian locality."

"I don't see that it matters where you are, if you've got to be in London," said Paddy more bluntly than grammatically.

"But London is a glorious place," he cried. "To be in London is life, to be out of it is death. London is--er--the centre of the world. The centre of learning, and commerce, and--er--art, and--er--progress."

"Don't they say the same about Paris, and Berlin, and New York, and lots of other places?" she asked calmly.