The Golden Silence | Page 3

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 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