Charles Rex - Ethel May Dell (i love reading .TXT) 📗

he could have seen more of Captain Larpent and possibly have enlisted his sympathy, but he had left the Castle with Saltash, and even Toby herself professed ignorance of his whereabouts. It was evident that they had never seen much of one another, and Bunny realized that he would look in vain for help in that quarter.
He doggedly maintained his resolve to win her none the less, and his visits to his sister's house were frequent. He spoke no word on the subject either to Maud or Jake. Toby should not feel that he had in any sense taken a mean advantage. But he never looked at her without the quick longing to take her in his arms rising in his heart, and though the longing was never satisfied he believed that she was aware of it. She was always friendly with him and never embarrassed in his presence. Yet he had a strong feeling that by some subtle means she was holding him off. He bided his time with what patience he could muster, but he was determined it should not be for long.
The work on Saltash's estate had done him good. He was keen to prove himself, and the vigorous, out-door life suited him. Jake saw with satisfaction that he was developing a self-reliance and resourcefulness that had not characterized him formerly. He had given up racing according to his promise, and the life he now led was after Jake's own heart, an existence of wholesome activity that was making of him exactly the type of man that he desired him to become. The boy was a gentleman and there was fine stuff in him. Jake gloried in the fact. There had always been in Bunny qualities that appealed to him very strongly, and it was in a large measure due to his influence that those qualities had ripened as they had.
He did not accompany Maud and Toby down to Fairharbour, for business kept him at the Stables. "Bring him back with you!" he said to his wife at parting, and she smiled and promised. Bunny was never difficult to persuade.
But when they reached the polo-ground he was in the midst of a crowd of visitors from the hotel, and it seemed at first as if he would have no time to spare for them. He very speedily detached himself, however, at sight of them and came up with an eager greeting.
"So awfully glad you've come. There are some people here you used to know, Maud, in the old days. Friends of Charlie's too. The Melroses--you remember them, don't you?"
The name came upon Maud with a curious shock. Yes, she remembered the Melroses. They belonged to the long, long ago before her marriage--to that strange epoch in her early girlhood when Charlie Burchester had filled her world. How far away it seemed! They had all been in the same set, they and the Cressadys who had been responsible for the scandal that had so wrung her proud heart. Lady Cressady had been dead for years. She wondered if Charlie had ever regretted her. It had been but a passing fancy, and she suspected that he had forgotten her long since. He had never really taken her seriously; of that she was convinced now. Life had been merely a game with him in those days. It was only recently that it had begun to be anything else.
She felt no keen desire to resume the long-forgotten acquaintance with the Melroses, but Bunny evidently expected it of her, had already told them about her, and she had no choice.
She followed him therefore, Toby very sedate and upright behind her. Toby was looking wonderfully pretty that day. She varied as a landscape varies on a windy day, but that afternoon she was at her best. Her blue eyes looked forth upon the crowd with a hint of audacity, and her _piquante_ little face was full of charm.
Bunny's look dwelt upon her as he drew aside for his sister to pass him at the pavilion. He pinched her elbow with a sudden smile.
"You don't want to go and talk to those people. Come with me and see the ponies!"
She responded with characteristic eagerness to the invitation. "Shall I? But won't Maud mind? Do you think I ought?"
"Of course you ought," he rejoined with decision. "Maud won't care. I'll bring you back to her before the play begins."
He drew her away through the crowd, and she went with him without further demur. Bunny was tall and bore himself with distinction. There was, moreover, something rather compelling about him just then, and Toby felt the attraction. She suffered the hand that grasped her own.
"Look here!" he said abruptly, as they drew apart from the throng. "I've got to see more of you somehow. Have you been dodging me all this time?"
"I?" said Toby.
She met his eyes with a funny little chuckle. There was spontaneous mischief in his own.
He gave her hand an admonitory squeeze. "I'm not laughing. You're not playing the game. What's the good of my coming to the house to see you if we never meet?"
"Don't understand," said Toby briefly.
"Yes, you do. Or you can if you try. You never seem to have any liberty now-a-days. Is it Maud's doing or your own?"
Toby laughed again lightly and bafflingly. "I can do anything I want to do," she said.
"Oh, can you?" Bunny pounced. "Then you've got to meet me sometimes away from the rest. See? Come! That's only fair."
Toby made a face at him. "Suppose I don't want to?" she said.
He laughed into her eyes. "Don't tell me that! When and where?"
She laughed back. He was hard to resist. "I don't know. I'm too busy."
"Rot!" said Bunny.
"You're very rude," she remarked.
"I'll be ruder when I get the chance," he laughed. "Listen, I want to see you alone very badly. You're not going to let me down."
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet," said Toby.
But she could not look with severity into the handsome young face that was bent to hers. It was not in her to repulse a friendly influence. She had to respond.
"I'll tell you what you're going to do," said Bunny, marking her weakening with cheery assurance. "You'll take Chops for a walk to-morrow evening through the Burchester Woods. You know that gate by the larch copse? It's barely a mile across the down. Be there at seven, and perhaps--who knows?--perhaps--Chops may meet somebody he's rather fond of."
"And again perhaps he mayn't," said Toby, suppressing a dimple.
"Oh, I say, that's shabby! You'll give him the chance anyhow?"
The pleading note sounded in Bunny's voice. Toby suddenly dropped her eyes. She looked as if she were bracing herself to refuse.
Bunny saw and quickly grappled with the danger. "Give him the chance!" he urged softly into her ear. "You won't be sorry--afterwards."
She did not lift her eyes, but somehow the enchantment held. By a bold stroke he had entered her defences, and she could not for the moment drive him out. She was silent.
"You'll come?" whispered Bunny.
They were nearing a little group of ponies that were being held in readiness at the end of the field. Toby quickened her pace.
He kept beside her, but he did not speak again. And perhaps his silence moved her more than speech, for she gave a little impulsive turn towards him and threw him her sudden, boyish smile.
"All right. We'll come," she said.
"Hooray!" crowed Bunny softly.
"But I shan't stay long," she warned him. "And if I don't like it, I shall never come again."
"You will like it," said Bunny with confidence.
"I wonder," said Toby with her chin in the air.


CHAPTER III
L'OISEAU BLEU

Bunny surpassed himself that afternoon. Wherever he went, success seemed to follow, and shouts of applause reached him from all quarters.
"That young fellow is a positive genius," commented General Melrose, who had a keen eye for the game. "He ought to be in the Service. Why isn't he, Mrs. Bolton?"
"He wasn't considered strong enough," Maud said. "It was a great disappointment to him. You see, he spent the whole of his childhood on his back with spine trouble. And when that was put right he outgrew his strength."
"Ah! I remember now. You used to wheel the poor little beggar about in a long chair. Well, he's rather different now from what he was in those days. Not much the matter with him, is there?"
"Nothing now," Maud said.
"What does he do with himself?" asked the General, surveying the distant figure at that moment galloping in a far corner of the field.
"He is agent on Lord Saltash's estate at Burchester," his daughter said, suddenly entering the conversation. "He was telling me about it at luncheon. He and Lord Saltash are friends."
"Ah! To be sure!" General Melrose's look suddenly came to Maud and she felt herself colour a little.
"He is an old friend of the family," she said. "We live not far from the Castle. My husband owns the Graydown Stables."
"Oh, I know that," the General said courteously. "I know your husband, Mrs. Bolton, and I am proud to know him. What I did not know until to-day was that he was your husband. I never heard of your marriage."
"We have been married for eight years," she said with a smile.
"It must be at least ten since I saw you last," he said. "This girl of mine--Sheila--must have been at school in those days. You never met her?"
Maud turned to the girl. "I don't think we have ever met before," she said. "Is this your first visit to Fairharbour?"
"My first visit, yes." Sheila leaned forward. She was a pretty girl of two-and-twenty with a quantity of soft dark hair and grey eyes that held a friendly smile. "We don't go to the sea much in the summer as a rule. We get so much of it in the winter. Dad always winters in the South. It only seems a few weeks since we came back from Valrosa."
Maud was conscious of an abrupt jerk from Toby on her other side, and she laid a hand on her arm with the kindly intention of drawing her into the conversation. But the next instant feeling tension under her hand, she turned to look at her, and was surprised to see that Toby was staring out across the field with wide, strained eyes. She looked so white that Maud had a moment of sharp anxiety.
"Is anything the matter, dear?" she whispered.
An odd little tremor went through Toby. She spoke with an effort. "I thought he was off his pony that time, didn't you?"
She kept her eyes upon Bunny who was coming back triumphant.
Maud smiled. "Oh, I don't think there is much danger of that. Miss Melrose was talking about Valrosa. You were there too last winter, weren't you?"
The colour mounted in Toby's face. She turned almost defiantly. "Just for a day or two. I was at school at Geneva. I went there to join my father."
"I was at school at Geneva a few years ago," said Sheila Melrose. "You didn't go to Mademoiselle Denise, I suppose?"
"No," said Toby briefly. "Madame Beaumonde."
"I never heard of her," said Sheila. "It must have been after I left."
Toby nodded. "I wasn't there long. I've never been anywhere long. But I've left school now, and I'm going to do as I like."
"A very wise resolution!" commented a laughing voice behind her. "It's one of the guiding principles of my life."
All the party turned, Toby with a quick exclamation muffled at birth. Saltash, attired in a white yachting suit and looking more than usually distinguished