The Golden Silence | Page 4

to win for me and himself. His
heart was broken, and he took his own life. My heart would have been
broken too, and but for you I----"
"Don't, please," Stephen broke in. "We won't talk any more about the
interview. I'd like to forget it. I should have called here yesterday, as I
wired in answer to your telegram saying you were at the Carlton, but
being at my brother's place in Cumberland, I couldn't get back till----"
"Oh, I understand," Margot cut in. Then she laughed a sly little laugh.
"I think I understand too why you went to Cumberland. Now tell me.
Confession's good for the soul. Didn't your brother wire for you the
minute he saw that announcement in The Morning Post, day before
yesterday?"
"He did wire. Or rather the Duchess did, asking me to go at once to
Cumberland, on important business. I found your telegram, forwarded

from my flat, when I got to Northmorland Hall. If I'd known you were
moving, I wouldn't have gone till to-day."
"You mean, dear, you wouldn't have let me move? Now, do you think
there's any harm in a girl of my age being alone in a hotel? If you do,
it's dreadfully old-fashioned of you. I'm twenty-four."
During the progress of the case, it had been mentioned in court that the
claimant's daughter was twenty-nine (exactly Stephen Knight's age);
but Margot ignored this unfortunate slip, and hoped that Stephen and
others had forgotten.
"No actual harm. But in the circumstances, why be conspicuous?
Weren't you comfortable with Mrs. Middleton? She seemed a
miraculously nice old body for a lodging-house keeper, and fussed over
you no end----"
"It was for your sake that I wanted to be in a good hotel, now our
engagement has been announced," explained Miss Lorenzi. "I didn't
think it suitable for the Honourable Stephen Knight's future wife to go
on living in stuffy lodgings. And as you've insisted on my accepting an
income of eighty pounds a month till we're married, I'm able to afford a
little luxury, dearest. I can tell you it's a pleasure, after all I've
suffered!--and I felt I owed you something in return for your generosity.
I wanted your fiancée to do you credit in the eyes of the world."
Stephen bit his lip. "I see," he said slowly.
Yet what he saw most clearly was a very different picture. Margot as
she had seemed the day he met her first, in the despised South
Kensington lodgings, whither he had been implored to come in haste, if
he wished to save a wretched, starving girl from following her father
out of a cruel world. Of course, he had seen her in court, and had
reluctantly encountered her photograph several times before he had
given up looking at illustrated papers for fear of what he might find in
them. But Margot's tragic beauty, as presented by photographers, or as
seen from a distance, loyally seated at the claimant's side, was as
nothing to the dark splendour of her despair when the claimant was in

his new-made grave. It was the day after the burial that she had sent for
Stephen; and her letter had arrived, as it happened, when he was
thinking of the girl, wondering whether she had friends who would
stand by her, or whether a member of his family might, without being
guilty of bad taste, dare offer help.
Her tear-blotted letter had settled that doubt, and it had been so
despairing, so suggestive of frenzy in its wording, that Stephen had
impulsively rushed off to South Kensington at once, without stopping
to think whether it would not be better to send a representative
combining the gentleness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent,
and armed for emergencies with a blank cheque.
Margot's hair, so charmingly dressed now, folding in soft dark waves
on either side her face, almost hiding the pink-tipped ears, had been
tumbled, that gloomy afternoon six weeks ago, with curls escaping here
and there; and in the course of their talk a great coil had fallen down
over her shoulders. It was the sort of thing that happens to the heroine
of a melodrama, if she has plenty of hair; but Stephen did not think of
that then. He thought of nothing except his sympathy for a beautiful
girl brought, through no fault of her own, to the verge of starvation and
despair, and of how he could best set about helping her.
She had not even money enough to buy mourning. Lorenzi had left
debts which she could not pay. She had no friends. She did not know
what was to become of her. She had not slept for many nights. She had
made up her mind to die as