The Datchet Diamonds. Marsh Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ quarter of a million! Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, Cyril!"

      "It sounds a nice little sum, doesn't it? I hope that it will feel as nice when it's mine!"

      "But, Cyril, I don't understand. Is it a new speculation you are entering on?"

      "It is a speculation-of a kind." His tone was ironical, though she did not seem to be conscious of the fact. "A peculiar kind. Its peculiarity consists in this, that, though I may not be able to lay my hands on the entire quarter of a million, I can on an appreciable portion of it whenever I choose."

      "What is the nature of the speculation? Is it on the Stock Exchange?"

      "That, at present, is a secret. It is not often that I have kept a secret from you; you will have to forgive me, Daisy, if I keep one now."

      Something peculiar in his tone caught her ear. She glanced at him sharply.

      "You are really in earnest, Cyril? You do mean that there is a reasonable prospect of your position being improved at last?"

      "There is not only a reasonable prospect, there is a practical certainty."

      "In spite of what you have lost in Eries?"

      "In spite of everything." A ring of passion came into his voice. "Daisy, don't ask me any more questions now. Trust me! I tell you that in any case a fortune, or something very like one, is within my grasp."

      He stopped, and she was silent. They went and stood where they had been standing the night before-looking towards the Worthing lights. Each seemed to be wrapped in thought. Then she said softly, in her voice a trembling-

      "Cyril, I am so glad."

      "I am glad that you are glad."

      "And I am so sorry for what I said last night."

      "What was it you said that is the particular occasion of your sorrow?"

      She drew closer to his side. When she spoke it was as if, in some strange way, she was afraid.

      "I am sorry that I said that if luck went against you to-day things would have to be over between us. I don't know what made me say it. I did not mean it. I thought of it all night; I have been thinking of it all day. I don't think that, whatever happens, I could ever find it in my heart to send you away."

      "I assure you, lady, that I should not go unless you sent me!"

      "Cyril!" She pressed his arm. Her voice sank lower. She almost whispered in his ear, while her eyes looked towards the Worthing lights. "I think that perhaps it would be better if we were to get married as soon as we can-better for both of us."

      Turning, he gripped her arms with both his hands.

      "Do you mean it?"

      "I do; if you do the great things of which you talk or if you don't. If you don't there is my little fortune, with which we must start afresh, both of us together, either on this side of the world or on the other, whichever you may choose."

      "Daisy!" His voice vibrated with sudden passion. "Will you come with me to the other side of the world in any case?"

      "What-even if you make your fortune?"

      "Yes; even if I make my fortune!"

      She looked at him with that something on her face which is the best thing that a man can see. And tears came into her eyes. And she said to him, in the words which have been ringing down the ages-

      "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me!"

      It may be that the words savoured to him of exaggeration; at any rate, he turned away, as if something choked his utterance. She, too, was still.

      "I suppose you don't want a grand wedding."

      "I want a wedding, that's all I want. I don't care what sort of a wedding it is so long as it's a wedding. And" – again her voice sank, and again she drew closer to his side-"I don't want to have to wait for it too long."

      "Will you be ready to marry me within a month?"

      "I will."

      "Then within a month we will be married."

      They were silent. His thoughts, in a dazed sort of fashion, travelled to the diamonds which were in somebody else's Gladstone bag. Her thoughts wandered through Elysian fields. It is possible that she imagined-as one is apt to do-that his thoughts were there likewise.

      All at once she said something which brought him back from what seemed to be a waking dream. She felt him start.

      "Come with me, and let's tell Charlie."

      The suggestion was not by any means to Mr. Paxton's taste. He considered for a few seconds, seeming to hesitate. She perceived that her proposition had not been received with over-much enthusiasm.

      "Surely you don't mind our telling Charlie?"

      "No" – his voice was a little surly-"I don't mind."

      Miss Charlotte Wentworth, better known to her intimates as Charlie, was in some respects a young woman of the day. She was thirty, and she wrote for her daily bread-wrote anything, from "Fashions" to "Poetry," from "Fiction" to "Our Family Column." She had won for herself a position of tolerable comfort, earning something over five-hundred a year with satisfactory regularity. To state that is equivalent to saying that, on her own lines, she was a woman of the world, a citizen of the New Bohemia, capable of holding something more than her own in most circumstances in which she might find herself placed, with most, if not all, of the sentiment which is supposed to be a feminine attribute knocked out of her. She was not bad-looking; dressed well, with a suggestion of masculinity; wore pince-nez, and did whatsoever it pleased her to do. Differing though they did from each other in so many respects, she and Daisy Strong had been the friends of years. When Mrs. Strong had died, and Daisy was left alone, Miss Wentworth had insisted on their setting up together, at least temporarily, a joint establishment, an arrangement from which there could be no sort of doubt that Miss Strong received pecuniary advantage. Mr. Paxton was not Miss Wentworth's lover-nor, to be frank, was she his; the consequence of which was that her brusque, outspoken method of speech conveyed to his senses-whether she intended it or not-a suggestion of scorn, being wont to touch him on just those places where he found himself least capable of resistance.

      When the lovers entered, Miss Wentworth, with her person on one chair and her feet on another, was engaged in reading a magazine which had just come in. Miss Strong, desiring to avoid the preliminary skirmishing which experience had taught her was apt to take place whenever her friend and her lover met, plunged at once into the heart of the subject which was uppermost in her mind.

      "I've brought you some good news-at least I think it is good news."

      Miss Wentworth looked at her-a cross-examining sort of look-then at Mr. Paxton, then back at the lady.

      "Good news? One always does associate good news with Mr. Paxton. The premonition becomes a kind of habit."

      The gentleman thus alluded to winced. Miss Strong did not appear to altogether relish the lady's words. She burst out with the news of which she spoke, as if with the intention of preventing a retort coming from СКАЧАТЬ