"Rather long. I'm very slow." Paul explained. "I met you at Summersoft a long time ago.""Oh yes - with Henry St. George. I remember very well. Before his poor wife - " General Fancourt paused a moment, smiling a little less. "I dare say you know.""About Mrs. St. George's death? Certainly - I heard at the time.""Oh no, I mean - I mean he's to be married."
"Ah I've not heard that!" But just as Paul was about to add "To whom?" the General crossed his intention.
"When did you come back? I know you've been away - by my daughter.
She was very sorry. You ought to give her something new.""I came back last night," said our young man, to whom something had occurred which made his speech for the moment a little thick.
"Ah most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn't you turn up at dinner?""At dinner?" Paul just mechanically repeated, not liking to ask whom St. George was going to marry, but thinking only of that.
"There are several people, I believe. Certainly St. George. Or afterwards if you like better. I believe my daughter expects - "He appeared to notice something in the visitor's raised face (on his steps he stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and the interruption gave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, from which he sought a quick issue. "Perhaps then you haven't heard she's to be married."Paul gaped again. "To be married?"
"To Mr. St. George - it has just been settled. Odd marriage, isn't it?" Our listener uttered no opinion on this point: he only continued to stare. "But I dare say it will do - she's so awfully literary!" said the General.
Paul had turned very red. "Oh it's a surprise - very interesting, very charming! I'm afraid I can't dine - so many thanks!""Well, you must come to the wedding!" cried the General. "Oh Iremember that day at Summersoft. He's a great man, you know.""Charming - charming!" Paul stammered for retreat. He shook hands with the General and got off. His face was red and he had the sense of its growing more and more crimson. All the evening at home - he went straight to his rooms and remained there dinnerless - his cheek burned at intervals as if it had been smitten. He didn't understand what had happened to him, what trick had been played him, what treachery practised. "None, none," he said to himself. "I've nothing to do with it. I'm out of it - it s none of my business." But that bewildered murmur was followed again and again by the incongruous ejaculation: "Was it a plan - was it a plan?" Sometimes he cried to himself, breathless, "Have I been duped, sold, swindled?" If at all, he was an absurd, an abject victim. It was as if he hadn't lost her till now. He had renounced her, yes; but that was another affair - that was a closed but not a locked door. Now he seemed to see the door quite slammed in his face. Did he expect her to wait - was she to give him his time like that: two years at a stretch? He didn't know what he had expected - he only knew what he hadn't. It wasn't this - it wasn't this. Mystification bitterness and wrath rose and boiled in him when he thought of the deference, the devotion, the credulity with which he had listened to St. George. The evening wore on and the light was long; but even when it had darkened he remained without a lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, where he lay through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing at the gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear something, to bear having been made a fool of. He had made it too easy - that idea passed over him like a hot wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven o'clock strike, he jumped up, remembering what General Fancourt had said about his coming after dinner. He'd go - he'd see her at least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt as if some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the others were wanting: he couldn't do his sum till he had got all his figures.
He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven he was at Manchester Square. There were a good many carriages at the door -a party was going on; a circumstance which at the last gave him a slight relief, for now he would rather see her in a crowd. People passed him on the staircase; they were going away, going "on" with the hunted herdlike movement of London society at night. But sundry groups remained in the drawing-room, and it was some minutes, as she didn't hear him announced, before he discovered and spoke to her. In this short interval he had seen St. George talking to a lady before the fireplace; but he at once looked away, feeling unready for an encounter, and therefore couldn't be sure the author of "Shadowmere" noticed him. At all events he didn't come over though Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him - she almost rushed at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had forgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; she was in white, there were gold figures on her dress and her hair was a casque of gold. He saw in a single moment that she was happy, happy with an aggressive splendour. But she wouldn't speak to him of that, she would speak only of himself.
"I'm so delighted; my father told me. How kind of you to come!"She struck him as so fresh and brave, while his eyes moved over her, that he said to himself irresistibly: "Why to him, why not to youth, to strength, to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich young force, to failure, to abdication to superannuation?" In his thought at that sharp moment he blasphemed even against all that had been left of his faith in the peccable Master. "I'm so sorry Imissed you," she went on. "My father told me. How charming of you to have come so soon!""Does that surprise you?" Paul Overt asked.
