The Golden Silence | Page 3

you and everything. If you just would realize that,
you couldn't scold me."
"I'm not scolding you," he said desperately. "But couldn't you have
stopped in your sitting-room--I suppose you have one--and let me see
you there? It's loathsome making a show of ourselves----"
"I haven't a private sitting-room. It would have been too extravagant,"
returned Miss Lorenzi. "Please sit down--by me."
Stephen sat down, biting his lip. He must not begin to lecture her, or
even to ask why she had exchanged her quiet lodgings for the Carlton
Hotel, because if he once began, he knew that he would be carried on to
unsafe depths. Besides, he was foolish enough to hate hurting a
woman's feelings, even when she most deserved to have them hurt.
"Very well. It can't be helped now. Let us talk," said Stephen. "The first
thing is, what to do with this newspaper chap, if you didn't give him the
interview----"
"Oh, I did give it--in a way," she admitted, looking rather frightened,
and very beautiful. "You mustn't do anything to him. But--of course it
was only because I thought it would be better to tell him the truth.
Surely it was?"
"Surely it wasn't. You oughtn't to have received him."
"Then do you mind so dreadfully having people know you've asked me
to marry you, and that I've said 'yes'?"

Margot Lorenzi's expression of pathetic reproach was as effective as
her eyelash play, when seen for the first time, as Stephen knew to his
sorrow. But he had seen the one as often as the other.
"You must know I didn't mean anything of the sort. Oh, Margot, if you
don't understand, I'm afraid you're hopeless."
"If you speak like that to me, I shall simply end everything as my father
did," murmured the young woman, in a stifled, breaking voice. But her
eyes were blazing.
It almost burst from Stephen to order her not to threaten him again, to
tell her that he was sick of melodrama, sick to the soul; but he kept
silence. She was a passionate woman, and perhaps in a moment of
madness she might carry out her threat. He had done a great deal to
save her life--or, as he thought, to save it. After going so far he must
not fail now in forbearance. And worse than having to live with
beautiful, dramatic Margot, would it be to live without her if she killed
herself because of him.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you," he said when he could control
his voice.
She smiled. "No, of course you didn't. It was stupid of me to fly out. I
ought to know that you're always good. But I don't see what harm the
interview could do you, or me, or any one. It lets all the world know
how gloriously you've made up to me for the loss of the case, and the
loss of my father; and how you came into my life just in time to save
me from killing myself, because I was utterly alone, defeated, without
money or hope."
She spoke with the curiously thrilling emphasis she knew how to give
her words sometimes, and Stephen could not help thinking she did
credit to her training. She had been preparing for the stage in Canada,
the country of the Lorenzis' adoption, before her father brought her to
England, whither he came with a flourish of trumpets to contest Lord
Northmorland's rights to the title.

"The world knew too much about our affairs already," Stephen said
aloud. "And when you wished our engagement to be announced in The
Morning Post, I had it put in at once. Wasn't that enough?"
"Every one in the world doesn't read The Morning Post. But I should
think every one in the world has read that interview, or will soon,"
retorted Margot. "It appeared only yesterday morning, and was copied
in all the evening papers; in this morning's ones too; and they say it's
been cabled word for word to the big Canadian and American dailies."
Stephen had his gloves in his hand, and he tore a slit across the palm of
one, without knowing it. But Margot saw. He was thinking of the
heading in big black print at the top of the interview: "Romantic
Climax to the Northmorland-Lorenzi Case. Only Brother of Lord
Northmorland to Marry the Daughter of Dead Canadian Claimant.
Wedding Bells Relieve Note of Tragedy."
"We've nothing to be ashamed of--everything to be proud of," Miss
Lorenzi went on. "You, of your own noble behaviour to me, which, as I
said to the reporter, must be making my poor father happy in another
world. Me, because I have won You, far more than because some day I
shall have gained all that father failed