"Have an eclair!" suggested young Mr. Harte encouragingly. "Probably made with egg substitute, certainly filled with synthetic cream, guaranteed rather to atrophy than to increase the figure."
His companion, who had been sitting in brooding silence for several minutes, looked up, smiled, and shook her head. "No, thanks. I'm not afraid of getting fat."
"Well, that's something," said Timothy. "What a repellent joint this is!"
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.
"That which repels. A table which is not only too small, but which stands on unequal legs; rout chairs, than which there is nothing less conducive to habits of easy social intercourse; a general atmosphere of mobcappery; and -"
"Not that. Why is it something that I'm not afraid of getting fat?"
"Oh, merely that it's the only thing I've discovered, to date, which you're not afraid of!"
For a moment her rather stormy grey eyes lifted to his in a wide, startled look; then they were lowered, and she said in a hard voice: "Don't be absurd!"
"Of course, I don't mean that there is nothing else you're not afraid of," said Timothy conversationally. "Only that I haven't yet discovered what these things are. Have some more tea!"
"I'm not going to marry you," said Beulah abruptly.
"Announcements like that," said Mr. Harte, not noticeably abashed, "should never be made in crowded tea-shops. Besides, it isn't true."
"It is true! I can't possibly marry you! I ought to have seen that at the start!"
"Why? Have you got a husband who's an RC and won't give you a divorce, or any little thing like that?" enquired Timothy, interested.
"No, of course not!"
"Oh, well, then we needn't worry!"
"That's what you think!" said Beulah crudely. "Look here, I - the thing is - There are things in my life you don't know anything about!"
"Good God, I should hope there were!" retorted Timothy. "I've only known you a month!"
"And some of them you wouldn't like!"
"I daresay. Come to think of it, I can tell you of one thing in your young life I don't like right now, and that's Mr. Daniel Seaton-Carew."
She flushed. "He's not a thing in my life: you needn't worry!"
"That's fine. Dissuade him from putting his arm round you, and calling you his little protegee."
Her colour was still heightened; she kept her eyes on her plate. "It's only his way. He's old enough to be my father!" "Yes, that's what makes it all the more objectionable," said Timothy.
She bit her lip, but said in a sulky voice: "Anyway, it's got nothing to do with you."
"It has everything to do with me. You have plighted your troth to me, my girl."
"It's no use. I can't marry you."
"Then I shall sue you for breach of promise. Why, by the way, have you had this sudden change of heart?"
"It isn't possible. I must have been crazy! I can't think why you want to marry me!"
"Good lord, didn't I tell you? I love you!"
She muttered: "Yes, you told me. That's what I - what I don't understand! Why should you?"
"Oh, I shouldn't worry over that, if I were you!" said Timothy kindly. "Of course, if you insist, I'll enumerate the various things which attract me to you, but they really haven't got much to do with it. To be thoroughly vulgar, we just clicked. Or didn't we?"
Her face quivered; she gave a rather convulsive nod. "Yes, but -"
"There you are, then. You know, for an intelligent girl, you say some remarkably stupid things. You'd be properly stymied if I asked you what you saw in me to fall in love with, wouldn't you?"
A flicker of humour shone in her eyes. "No, I shouldn't," she replied. "Anyone can see what I fell for at a glance! Exactly what about fifty other girls have fallen for!"
"You are exaggerating," said Mr. Harte, preserving his sang-froid. "Not much, of course, but slightly. Forty three is the correct number, and that includes my niece. I'm afraid she may not take very kindly to our marriage, by the way. She says she is going to marry me herself, but of course that's impossible. If we had only lived in medieval times I could have got a dispensation, I expect. As it is —'
"You are a fool!" interrupted Miss Birtley, laughing in spite of herself. "Nor do I think that your niece is the only member of your family who wouldn't take kindly to our marriage."
"You never know. It's within the bounds of possibility that your family may not take kindly to me."
"I have no family," she said harshly.
"What, none at all?"
"I have an uncle, and his wife. I don't have anything to do with them."
"What a bit of luck for me!" said Mr. Harte. "I was rather funking being shown to a clutter of aunts and cousins. My half-brother says it's hell. He had to go through the mill. Said his hands and feet seemed too large suddenly, and whenever he thought out a classy line to utter it turned out to be the one thing he oughtn't to have said."
"Like me with your mother."
"Not in the least like that. I distinctly recall that you said how-do-you-do to Mamma, and I seem to remember that you made one unprompted and, I am bound to say, innocuous remark about the evils of progress as exemplified by pneumatic-drills. The rest of your conversation was monosyllabic."
There was an awful pause. "Well, there you are!" said Miss Birtley defiantly. "I have no conversation!"
"I have no wish to appear boastful," returned young Mr. Harte, "but from my earliest days it has been said of me by all who know me best that I talk enough for two, or even more."
"Your mother," said Miss Birtley, giving him a straight look, "wrote me down as an adventuress, and that is exactly what I am! So now you know! My aim is to marry a man of good social standing, independent means, and a background. That's why I encouraged you to propose to me."
"Is it really?" said Mr. Harte. "Then why on earth did you waste your time on me, instead of gunning for our newest and most socialistic peer?"
Miss Birtley's air of slightly belligerent gravity was momentarily impaired. "Are you talking about Lance Guisborough? Well, if he ever cleaned his nails, or got his hair cut -"
"My good girl," said Mr. Harte severely, "if you are going to let little things like that weigh with you, you will never get anywhere! Tut-tut, I thought better of you! What were you thinking about to waste your time entrapping me into matrimony when there was a whole, live baron waiting to be picked up? Or have you been misinformed? I shall, at what I trust may be some far distant date, inherit a baronetcy; but when you talk of independent means, you are speaking outside the book. Lawyers and clients being what they are, I am at this present very happy to appear in the dingiest of police courts for the modest fee of three-and-one, or even less; my well-groomed air of affluence being due to the generosity of my Papa, who makes me a handsome allowance. This is what comes of judging by appearances. I don't say that Guisborough is a rich man, but you should remember that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; and many a promising Communist has been persuaded by a good woman's influence to cut his hair, and abstain from wearing fancy ties."
"Oh, Timothy, do shut up!" begged Beulah. "Besides, he's one of Cynthia Haddington's admirers!"
"Well, considering the number of times you've cast it in my teeth that I too was one of her admirers, I can't see what that's got to do with it."
"So you were!" said Beulah, with a touch of spirit. "If you hadn't been pursuing her, we should never have met!"
Mr. Harte sighed. "If dancing three times with a girl to whom one had been presented at a private party, subsequently accepting an invitation to a ball given by her mother, and following this up with a civil call to return thanks, constitutes pursuit, I plead guilty," he said.
"At all events," said Beulah somewhat viciously, "Mrs. Haddington regards you as the best of the eligibles! And if she knew I was having tea with you now she would probably give me the sack!"
"In that case, you trot straight back to Charles Street, ducky, and tell her!" recommended Mr. Harte. "Pausing only to pay the bill here, I will burst off to procure a special licence so that we can be married tomorrow. You shall beguile some long winter's evening for me by recounting to me the circumstances which induced you to take a job as dog's body to that well-preserved corncrake."
"If you want to know," responded Miss Birtley, "Dan Seaton-Carew got me the job! Now how do you feel about marrying me?"
"Shaken but staunch. Seriously, how did that woman muscle on to the fringe of decent society?"
"I don't know, but I think she was sort of sponsored by Lady Nest Poulton," said Beulah. "They're very thick, that I do know."
"What times we do live in, to be sure! Poor old Greystoke has had to sell his place, of course, but I shouldn't have thought an Ellerbeck would have stooped quite as low."
"That must be a thoroughly unfair remark!" said Beulah. "I know nothing about Lord Greystoke's circumstances, but everyone knows that Lady Nest's husband is rolling!"
Just what I was thinking," agreed Timothy. "So what's the tie-up?"
"Why should there be a tie-up?"
"Because, my sweet, feather-headed nit-wit though she may be, and indeed is, the Lady Nest doesn't make a bosom-friend of a brassy-haired widow on the up-and-up without having some strong inducement so to do."
"And they say women are spiteful!" exclaimed Beulah scornfully. "Do you also imagine there's a tie-up between her and Dan Seaton-Carew? She's a friend of his as well."
"Good God!" said Timothy. "I wonder if there's any insanity in the Ellerbecks?"
"Seaton-Carew is considered to be rather an attractive type."
"What does he attract? Pond-life?"
"Apparently, Lady Nest Poulton - if you call her a form of pond-life."
"No, but an unsteady type. Sort of woman who used to go to Limehouse for a thrill in the wicked twenties. That may be it, of course - though I should rather describe your Charles Street set-up as a menagerie."
"Really, Timothy!" she expostulated. "Lots of perfectly respectable people come to the house!"
"I will grant you a sprinkling of fairly harmless types, who probably feel that if Lady Nest knows Mrs. Haddington she must be all right -"
"You don't suppose that Colonel Cartmel or Sir Roderick Vickerstown would be influenced by that, do you?"
"No, my love, I don't. It is well-known that both these aged crocodiles will lend the cachet of their presence to almost any house where the food and the wines are firstclass. Does your respected employer buy exclusively on the black market?"
"If I knew I shouldn't tell you. After all, she does employ me!"
"So she does. What, by the way, is your precise status in the house? Yes, I know she calls you her secretary, but you appear to me to spend half your time chasing round London with a shopping-list."
"Well, I do do her secretarial work, only, of course, there isn't a great deal of it, so I shop for her as well, and see that things are all right when she gives a party, and - oh, anything that crops up!"
"And what," enquired Mr. Harte politely, "are your hours?"
"I don't have regular hours. I'm supposed to leave at six but Mrs. Haddington likes me to be on tap."
"Does she, indeed? You must be pulling down a colossal screw!"
Beulah gave a rather bitter little laugh. "Unfortunately I don't belong to a Union! I get three pounds ten a week - and quite a number of meals. If another female is wanted, with the family; if not, on a tray in the library. Which I prefer!"
She glanced up, and found that Mr. Harte's very blue eyes were fixed on her face in an uncomfortably searching look.
"Why do you stick it?" he asked. "Your employer, to put it frankly, is a bitch; she treats you like mud; and you're at her beck and call, from morning till midnight. What's the big idea?"
"It suits me," she said evasively. Jobs aren't so easily come by these days." She said, too swiftly changing the subject: "Are you coming to the Bridge-party?"
"Yes, are you?"
"I shall be there, of course. Not playing."
"That goes without saying. Who's going to be there? The usual gang?"
"I think so. Eleven tables, plus one or two people who are coming either as scorers, or just to watch. Lady Nest is bringing her husband, which will make it a red-letter evening. Generally he never comes near Charles Street."
"And who shall blame him? I needn't ask if the dashing Dan Seaton-Carew will be present?"
"Of course he will be. Look here, Timothy, are you - do you imagine you've any cause to be jealous of him? Because, if so, get rid of the idea! I thought at first that there was some kind of a liaison between him and Mrs. Haddington, but I seem to have been wrong: it's Cynthia he's after."
"Satyrs and Nymphs. What a repulsive thought! Let us hope it is but a fleeting fancy. I shouldn't think he was a marrying man: his tastes are too - er - catholic. However, if he's spreading his charm over the Shining Beauty, that would no doubt account for the display of temperament young Sydney Butterwick treated the company to on the night we were bidden to Charles Street to listen to the Stalham String Quartet."
"You are disgusting!" said Beulah.
"It wasn't I who was disgusting," Timothy replied. "Not that disgusting is the word I should have chosen to have described any of it. I'm all for light relief, I am, besides being very broad-minded."
"Broad-minded!"
"Yes, but not broad-minded enough to stomach the Charles Street menage as a setting for the girl I'm going to marry."
"You do think I'm an innocent flower, don't you?"
"Yes, and that in spite of all your endeavours to convince me that you have been a hardened woman of the world for years."
She shrugged. "It's not my fault if you persist in cherishing illusions. I told you that you knew nothing about me."
"Oh, not quite as little as that!" said Timothy cheerfully. "I know, for instance, that at some time or another you've taken a nasty knock which has led you to suppose that the world is against you. Also that you have quarrelled with your relations; and that beneath your not-entirely convincing air of having been hard-boiled early in life you are more than a little scared."
"Scared? Why should I be scared?" she asked sharply.
"That," he replied, "I do not know, and do not propose to ask you. I am quite content to wait for the day when your woman's instinct tells you that I am a fit and proper person to confide in."
She rose abruptly to her feet, gathering up her gloves and her handbag, and saying: "I must go. I'd no idea it was so late. Don't come with me! I - I'd rather you didn't!"