"I don't want to be brash--and what I want to say may seem kind of that way to you.But it ain't.Anyhow, I guess it'll relieve your mind.Lady Joan, you're a looker--you're a beaut from Beautville.If Iwere your kind, and things were different, I'd be crazy about you--crazy! But I'm not your kind--and things are different." He drew a step nearer still to her in his intentness."They're this different.
Why, Lady Joan! I'm dead stuck on another girl!"She caught her breath again, leaning forward.
"Another--!"
"She says she's not a lady; she threw me down just because all this darned money came to me," he hastened on, and suddenly he was imperturbable no longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York than ever."She's a little bit of a quiet thing and she drops her h's, but gee--! You're a looker --you're a queen and she's not.But Little Ann Hutchinson-- Why, Lady Joan, as far as this boy's concerned"--and he oddly touched himself on the breast--"she makes you look like thirty cents."Joan quickly sat down on the chair she had just left.She rested an elbow on the table and shaded her face with her hand.She was not laughing; she scarcely knew what she was doing or feeling.
"You are in love with Ann Hutchinson," she said, in a low voice.
"Am I?" he answered hotly."Well, I should smile!" He disdained to say more.
Then she began to know what she felt.There came back to her in flashes scenes from the past weeks in which she had done her worst by him; in which she had swept him aside, loathed him, set her feet on him, used the devices of an ingenious demon to discomfit and show him at his poorest and least ready.And he had not been giving a thought to the thing for which she had striven to punish him.And he plainly did not even hate her.His mind was clear, as water is clear.He had come back to her this evening to do her a good turn--a good turn.
Knowing what she was capable of in the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he had determined to do her--in spite of herself--a good turn.
"I don't understand you," she faltered.
"I know you don't.But it's only because I'm so dead easy to understand.There's nothing to find out.I'm just friendly --friendly--that's all."
"You would have been friends with me! " she exclaimed."You would have told me, and I wouldn't let you! Oh!" with an impulsive flinging out of her hand to him, "you good --good fellow!""Good be darned! " he answered, taking the hand at once.
"You are good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you.But oh!
if you only knew!"
His face became mature again; but he took a most informal seat on the edge of the table near her.
"I do know--part of it.That's why I've been trying to be friends with you all the time." He said his next words deliberately."If I was the woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved wouldn't it have driven me mad to see another man in his place--and remember what was done to him.Inever even saw him, but, good God! "--she saw his hand clench itself--"when I think of it I want to kill somebody! I want to kill half a dozen.Why didn't they know it couldn't be true of a fellow like that!"She sat up stiffly and watched him.
"Do--you--feel like that--about him?"
"Do I!" red-hotly."There were men there that knew him! There were women there that knew him! Why wasn't there just one to stand by him?
A man that's been square all his life doesn't turn into a card-sharp in a night.Damn fools! I beg your pardon," hastily.And then, as hastily again: "No, I mean it.Damn fools!""Oh!" she gasped, just once.
Her passionate eyes were suddenly blinded with tears.She caught at his clenched hand and dragged it to her, letting her face drop on it and crying like a child.
The way he took her utter breaking down was just like him and like no one else.He put the other hand on her shoulder and spoke to her exactly as he had spoken to Miss Alicia on that first afternoon.
"Don't you mind me, Lady Joan," he said."Don't you mind me a bit.
I'll turn my back.I'll go into the billiard- room and keep them playing until you get away up-stairs.Now we understand each other, it'll be better for both of us.""No, don't go! Don't!" she begged."It is so wonderful to find some one who sees the cruelty of it." She spoke fast and passionately."No one would listen to any defense of him.My mother simply raved when Isaid what you are saying."