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  Martin didn’t answer that at once. He looked at her rather gloomily, and shrugged.

  “Well,” he said at last. “I’ve made my protest and, although of course I don’t expect you to take it at its face value—no girl would if she were in love with the man—I do beg you to think things over again, and in a more critical mood.”

  “I—you really needn’t worry about me like this, Martin.” Leonora spoke earnestly but her voice shook a little with her agitation. “I’m afraid my own first prejudice is partly responsible for your idea of Bruce. But truly it’s a most fantastic picture of him. You’ll see for yourself when you meet him.”

  “Very well, my dear. I can’t do anything but accept what you say. After all, it is true that you know him and I don’t,” Martin said. “I should be honestly glad to find that I was wrong—and in that case I promise to grovel for forgiveness.” And he grinned at her with a shadow of his old manner.

  “Thank you, Martin,” Leonora drew a deep breath of relief. And after that, neither of them mentioned Bruce again.

  Martin, once his outburst was past, made a gallant attempt to bring things back to normal.

  “He’s such a splendid loser that he makes me feel terribly guilty,” Leonora told herself regretfully, and she, too, then did her best to put things on their old, familiar footing.

  In the end, they achieved something like their friendly intimacy of the days before Bruce had come on the scene. And, by the time Martin handed her into the taxi that was to take her home, Leonora felt that everything was almost all right again.

  But the moment she re-entered the house, all the earlier, disturbing part of their conversation rushed back upon her, and she went quickly in search of Bruce, so that his very presence might reassure her. She felt, somehow, that she had been treacherous in even letting Martin say the things he had, and she wanted to kiss Bruce and hold him and feel that everything was secure.

  As she crossed the hall, she heard his voice coming from the library, and then his sister’s in reply.

  Leonora paused a moment at the door, smiling a little because she realized suddenly that they were speaking of her.

  “I think Lora is a dear child,” Miss Mickleham was saying. “But, frankly, Bruce, knowing you as well as I do, I cannot see why you should choose her for your wife.”

  “Can’t you? Then shall I tell you?”

  Leonora couldn’t see Bruce, but she could hear from his voice that he was smiling slightly. And it warmed her to her very heart that, straight on top of her conversation with Martin, she should hear him own to someone else that he loved her.

  “I wish you would,” she heard Miss Mickleham say.

  “Then let me remind you, my dear Agatha, that Lora has one superlative attraction which sets her beyond any other woman I know. She is the undisputed owner of seventy thousand pounds.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Leonora caught her breath in a sharp gasp as though someone had struck her a blow over her heart. She put out her hand against the wall to steady herself, and for a moment everything went round her.

  She wanted to scream: “Don’t say any more,” but it was like some dreadful dream where she could not even cry out.

  Then she heard Agatha say in a shocked voice:

  “Bruce, don’t talk like that. It’s callous and it’s wicked.”

  But Bruce laughed in that cool, hard manner of his.

  “It may be both, Agatha. But it’s also true. You don’t suppose I should be playing the great lover to Lora, do you, if she were not an heiress? You must surely know that.”

  And then Leonora managed to get away. She crept across the hall and up the stairs, feeling weak and faint. It was terrible, but near the top of the stairs she had to drag herself up by holding on to the banisters, and when she finally reached her room, she fell across her bed in a little heap.

  What had he meant? What could he have meant?

  But it was ridiculous to ask herself that, for he could have meant only one thing—exactly what he had said.

  It was not as though she had heard only one remark, which might have been misunderstood. There had been Agatha’s shocked comment, and then his own defiant insistence.

  She groaned a little and drew herself farther on to the bed, pulling the eiderdown over her, because her teeth were chattering with cold and shock.

  He was just a cheap adventurer. Just exactly what Martin had said.

  Oh, Martin! The thought of him ought to have been comfort now, but it was nothing of the sort. She ought to be realizing with relief that her eyes had been opened in time, and that it was good, dependable Martin she wanted.

  But it wasn’t Martin—it was Bruce. The Bruce she had thought she knew. Oh, not a perfect person, by any means—very imperfect, in fact—but her love in spite of all his faults.

  Only, he didn’t exist, after all. There was just this cool, hard, unloving stranger, who wanted her money and so could play-act and pretend that was she he loved.

  But it was not possible. Such acting did not exist. It could not be all pretence. Why, he had made her love him by the very force of his own suffocating passion. How could any man invent all that?

  She found that she was going round and round in circles telling herself that it was not possible, simply because she could not stand her ground and face the fact that it was so.

  “Then perhaps he loves me a little. Perhaps, at the bottom of his heart, he loves me just a very little,” she told herself feverishly. “It isn’t entirely the money. That’s important, too, of course, but he loves me too.” And then, with fierce pain and anger: “Oh God, have I no pride at all, that I can love a man who needs a bribe of seventy thousand pounds to take me!”

  That was what it came to in the end. He would have her—Oh yes, he would be very pleased to take her for his wife—if he were paid handsomely to do so.

  “No! That I cannot bear.” Leonora spoke aloud, though only in a whisper. “I must have it out with him. I must go down and speak to him. It isn’t humanly possible to go on like this.”

  But she went on lying there for a long time after that, still trying to find the courage to go down and face him.

  In the end it was almost dinner-time when she did go downstairs. And only Agatha was there.

  “Hallo, dear.” She looked surprised. “I didn’t think you had come in. I didn’t hear you.”

  “No. I went straight to my room. I felt a little tired so I’ve—been lying down on my bed,” Leonora said, surprised that she could make it all sound so ordinary. “Where is Bruce?” She could even speak of him quite casually.

  “He had to go out. A friend of his rang up—someone who is in England for only a few days. He wanted Bruce to go down there for the evening. We knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” (Marry her for her money and then pretend to consult her about details.) “Where is his friend staying?” She didn’t really care, but one had to make conversation.

  “Windsor way, I believe. Bruce drove himself. He told me to tell you he wouldn’t be late.”

  “That was nice of him,” Leonora wondered if her voice betrayed a trace of sarcasm, but if so Agatha failed to hear it.

  Millicent Dymster came in for dinner—she used to drop in casually once or twice a week at least—and so it was not specially noticeable that Leonora was rather quiet. In any case, she managed to carry her part in the conversation fairly well. Only once her composure faltered slightly, and that was when Millicent said: “I suppose you’re getting married very soon now, Lora?”

  “I suppose so,” Leonora said, and then, at Agatha’s surprised glance: “In fact, of course we are.”

  “Have you fixed the date yet?”

  “No, not exactly. Some time before the end of next month, I think.”

  “That only gives you about six weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  Leonora thought: “It is more than enough time to break it all off. Oh, I wish it were over and done with.”

>   “And are you going to live in London?” Millicent was not really curious, only asking the perfunctory questions one was expected to ask.

  “Bruce prefers very much to live in the country,” Leonora said carefully.

  “And you?”

  “Oh yes.” She bit her lip sharply, for she suddenly remembered Bruce kneeling beside her, holding her close and begging passionately that they should live somewhere “green and cool” together.

  Had that been acting too?

  But why?

  For a moment she felt in such bewilderment that she nearly buried her face in her hands. Then she recollected herself in time, and came back to earth to find that Millicent was just leaving.

  “I’m sorry you must go so early, Millicent,” Agatha was saying. “But I shall be seeing you on Thursday.”

  Leonora rather wished she would have stayed. There might have been a chance for her to escape to her own room then. As it was, she would have to keep up a tête à tête with Agatha herself, and it was so difficult to go on pretending indefinitely.

  Agatha, however, seemed rather pleased with the prospect of a talk. She took out her tapestry, which she worked most exquisitely, and settled herself in her favorite chair.

  “This is very pleasant, Lora dear. We don’t often get a chat together, and we really have quite a lot to talk about.”

  “Have we?” thought Leonora. But since she was rather touched by the friendly overture, she smiled sympathetically in answer.

  “I was so glad to hear you say you wanted to live in the country,” Agatha went on, as she carefully drew a strand of wool through her work. “Bruce feels so very strongly about it.”

  “I know.” Leonora hoped they were not going to talk about Bruce all the time. But, of course, he was the most obvious topic of discussion for his sister and his fiancée.

  “It was always the same, even when he was a child. We always lived in the country then. But perhaps he told you that?” Agatha looked up for a moment.

  “No. I never heard anything about Bruce as a child. Tell me about him.” Leonora half despised herself for the eager interest that clutched at her heart. She ought to hate Bruce—she was planning to have done with him. And yet here she was—hungry for dear, absurd details of him as a little boy.

  She came and sat on the rug at Agatha’s feet, partly, perhaps, so that the expression of her face would be hidden.

  For a minute or two Bruce’s sister was silent. Then she said:

  “Bruce and I are only half brother and sister, you know.”

  “Are you?” Leonora looked surprised.

  “Yes. My mother died a year after I was born, and when I was about eleven my father married again. She was the prettiest thing you ever saw—years younger than he was and, to tell the truth, very frivolous and silly. But he simply adored her.”

  Leonora smiled irresistibly.

  “Do you mean to say that Bruce actually had a pretty, frivolous mother?”

  “Yes.” Agatha smiled too. “It doesn’t seem possible, I know. He was not in the least like her, of course.”

  “Of course not.”

  “You must understand, there was no real harm in her,” Agatha said earnestly. “At least—I have always believed there was not, until the end, and I think I was right. She didn’t ask much of life—just to enjoy herself in her own light-hearted, flirtatious way. But, of course, that didn’t please my father at all, and there was often trouble.”

  “Your father was more like Bruce, I suppose?” Leonora said quickly.

  “Well, yes. In view of what happened afterwards, it’s rather curious, but Bruce was like my father in many ways.” Agatha hesitated.

  “Yes?—go on.”

  “Even having Bruce didn’t do anything much towards making my stepmother more settled and responsible, and really she spent very little time with us at the country house. She was nearly always in London, and usually, of course, my father with her. We had the most wonderful house in Norfolk then, and Bruce and I were always there. I was fond of the place—I always have been—but with Bruce it was an absolute passion. You know—he never does anything by halves.”

  “I know,” Leonora said, and she was powerless to keep the tenderness out of her voice.

  “I cannot remember a time when he didn’t love every inch of his home. Often when he was a child, I have seen him lie on the ground with his cheek pressed against the grass, quite still for ages, just because he was so happy to be there.”

  “Oh—Bruce.” Leonora smiled at this picture of him, but she felt the tears sting her eyelids too. “Was he a very dear little boy?” she said involuntarily.

  “Well—yes, I suppose he was,” Agatha agreed thoughtfully. “Very quiet and determined, but with a quality of—I can only call it restful content—very rare in a child.”

  “He was like that?” Leonora looked up, astonished. “I can’t imagine it.”

  “He was very different then,” his sister said a little sadly, and they neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Agatha went on: “He went away to boarding school, of course, but always the holidays were spent at home in Norfolk. He used to hate actually leaving the place, though he was quite happy at school, and the home-comings were the great events of his life. It was most extraordinary that he never seemed to miss his parents if they were away. The place was what he loved.”

  Leonora remembered then his saying that he had never loved any one. It was probably literally true. His parents didn’t sound the kind one could love much.

  “And then?” she prompted, because every detail about Bruce was utterly absorbing to her.

  Agatha laid down her work with a sigh.

  “It lasted until he was nearly sixteen, Lora. And then, without warning, it seemed to us, his mother ran away with another man. I can’t tell you how awful it was. My father was like someone crazy. I don’t think the things of which he accused her were true, but he raked up every silly flirtation there had ever been. Heaven knows, she must have been indiscreet and stupid enough, but he vowed she had never been faithful to him from the very beginning. And then he became obsessed with the idea that Bruce was not his son at all.”

  “Agatha! What did Bruce do?”

  “He couldn’t do anything. That was the terrible part. He was sent for from school, and simply plunged into this awful crisis without warning. My father couldn’t turn her out because she had gone already, but he told Bruce to go.”

  “But he couldn’t. Surely he couldn’t do that—legally I mean?”

  “No, I don’t suppose he could have really. I don’t know. But there was no one to help or advise Bruce, and in any case he was stunned by the whole thing. My father simply said Bruce was no son of his, and he didn’t intend to keep him or educate him any longer. I was there, because I cried—quite without effect—to make my father see reason, and I remember that Bruce only asked one question: ‘Am I never to come back to Farron?’ That was the name of the house, you understand.”

  “And what did your father say?” Leonora was quite pale by now.

  “He said—that he was going to sell the place, that he never wanted to see it again. Bruce didn’t say another word. He just went terribly white—and I sometimes think, Lora, that I’ve never seen him really smile since.”

  “But he has a wonderful smile,” murmured Leonora involuntarily.

  “Oh—that? Yes, I know what you mean. But I was thinking of the tranquil, unshadowed smile he had as a boy.”

  Leonora bit her lip. She wondered a little where all her anger against him had gone. What Agatha was saying didn’t really affect the facts as they were now. And yet:

  “Well, go on, anyway,” she said again, with a little sigh for her own weakness.

  “He came to my room that evening before I had gone to bed, and made me come out into the grounds. We walked through the orchards in the moonlight, I remember, and he told me he was going away that night. I begged him to stay and insist on some better sort of treatment, but he refused
. You know how impossible he is to move, when once his mind is made up.”

  “Yes.” That, at least, Leonora felt, was still true of him.

  “He was quite calm about it. He told me that he would try to get away abroad, and he vowed that he would make money and come back one day and buy Farron again for his own. He had ten pounds then in the world, poor Bruce, but he meant every word he said. I implored him to take some money I had, but he would not. I suppose he was thinking too bitterly of what my father had said about his not being one of us at all. So he went away with his ten pounds—and I never heard a word of him for twelve years.”

  Leonora stared at her in wordless horror, trying to imagine what it would be like to hear no word of Bruce for twelve years.

  “My father was as good as his word. He sold Farron, and he and I moved to the London house. A year later he died, leaving practically everything to charity, except a fairly small annuity to me. And even in his will he called me ‘his only child’.”

  “And then Bruce came back?” Leonora prompted her again.

  “Yes. He came back. Only, of course, I should never have known him. He had gone away a sweet-tempered, easy-natured schoolboy, and he came back a very hard man. Somehow, I can say that to you. Lora, because I believe you know it as well as I.”

  “Yes,” Leonora said quite simply. “I know he is hard. It doesn’t make any difference.”

  Agatha touched her hair and said: “He is really very lucky.”

  And then Leonora remembered that she was not going to marry him after all.

  “He never told me very much about those years, but he must have been all over the world and in the strangest places. Sometimes he had made quite a lot of money, sometimes he had lost it, but, on the whole, he had saved a fair amount. It was only when you set it against the price you would have had to pay for an estate like Farron that it seemed a ludicrous sum.”