The Imaginary Marriage. Henry St. John Cooper

THE DREAM GIRL

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      "She is utterly without generosity; she is cold and hard and bitter, and she has made a mountain out of a molehill, built up a great grievance on what was, after all, only a foolish and ill-considered statement. She is pleased to feel herself deeply insulted, and she hates me for what I did in perfect innocence. I have done all that I can do. I have offered to make amends in the only way I can think of, and she refuses to accept either that or my apologies. Very well, then … But what a lovely face it is, and for just that moment, when the hardness and bitterness were gone … " He paused; his own face softened. One could not be angry for long with a vision like that, which was passing before his mind, conjured up by memory.

      Just for that instant, when the flush had come into her cheeks, she had looked all those things that she was not—sweet, womanly, tender, and gentle, a woman with an immense capacity for love.

      "Bah!" said Hugh. "I'm an idiot. I shall go to a theatre to-night, forget all about her, and go home to-morrow—home." He sighed a little drearily. For months past he had pictured pretty Marjorie Linden as queen of that home, and now he knew that it would never be. His house would remain lonely and empty, as must his life be.

      He sighed sentimentally, and took out Marjorie's little pink note from his pocket-book. He noticed for the first time that it was somewhat over-scented. He realised that he did not like the smell of scent, especially on notepaper, and pink was not his favourite colour. In fact, he disliked pink. Marjorie was happy, Lady Linden was beaming on Tom Arundel, the cloud had lifted from Marjorie's life. Hugh tore up the pink, smelly little missive, and dropped the fragments into the grate of the hotel bedroom.

      "That's that!" he said. "And it's ended and done with!"

      He was amazed to find himself not broken-hearted and utterly cast down. He lighted his pipe and puffed hard, to destroy the lingering smell of the pink notepaper. Then he laughed gently.

      "By every right I should now be on my way to the bar to drown dull care in drink. She's a dear little soul, the sweetest and dearest and best in the world. I hope Tom Arundel will appreciate her and make the little thing happy. I would have done my best, but somehow I feel that Tom is the better man, so far as Marjorie is concerned."

      Grey eyes, not disdainful and cold and scornful, but soft, and filled with kindliness and gentleness, banished all memory of Marjorie's pretty pathetic blue eyes. Why, Hugh thought, had that girl looked at him like that for just one moment? Why had she appeared for that instant so different? It was as if a cold and bitter mask had fallen from her face, and he had had a peep at the true—the real woman, the woman all love and tenderness and gentleness, behind it.

      "Anyhow, it doesn't matter," said Hugh. "I've done what I believed to be the right thing. She turned me down; the affair is now closed, and we'll think of something else."

      But it was not easy. At his dinner, which he took in solitary state, he had a companion, a girl with grey eyes and flushed cheeks who sat opposite to him at the table. She said nothing, but she looked at him, and the beauty of her intoxicated him, and the smile of her found an answer on his own lips. She ate nothing, nor did the waiter see her; so far as the waiter was concerned, there was an empty chair, but Hugh Alston saw her.

      "Why," he asked, "why can you look like that, and yet be so different? That look in your eyes makes you the most beautiful and wonderful thing in this world, and yet … "

      He laughed softly to himself. He was uttering his thoughts aloud, and the unromantic waiter stared at him.

      "Beg your pardon, sir?" he asked.

      "That's all right!" Hugh said. "What won the three-thirty?"

      "I don't think there was any racing to-day, sir," the man said.

      He went away, not completely satisfied as to this visitor's sanity, and Hugh drifted back into dreams and memories.

      "You are very wonderful," he said to himself, "yet you made me very angry; you hurt me and made me furious. I called you ungenerous, and I meant it, and so you were. Yet when you look at me with your eyes like that and the colour in your cheeks, I can't find one word to say against you."

      He went to the theatre that night. It was a successful play. All London was talking of it, but Hugh Alston never remembered what it was about. He was thinking of a girl with cold disdainful looks that changed suddenly to softness and tenderness. She sat beside him as she had sat opposite to him at dinner. On the stage the actors talked meaningless stuff; nothing was real, save this girl beside him.

      "What's the matter with you, my good fellow, is," Hugh said to himself, as he walked back to the hotel that night, "you're a fickle man; you don't know your own mind. A week ago you were dreaming of Marjorie; you considered blue eyes the most beautiful thing in the world. You would not have listened to the claims of eyes of any other colour, and now—Bless her dear little heart, she'll be happy as the day is long with Tom Arundel, with his nice fair hair parted down the middle, and her pretty scented notepaper. Of course she'll be happy. She would have been miserable at Hurst Dormer, and so should I have been; seeing her miserable, I should have been miserable myself. But I shall go back to Hurst Dormer to-morrow and start on that renovation work. It will give me something to occupy my time and attention."

      That night, much to his surprise, Hugh found he could not sleep.

      "It's the strange bed," he said. "It's the noise of the London streets." Sleeplessness had never troubled him before, but to-night he rolled and tossed from side to side, and then at last he sat bolt upright in the bed.

      "Good Lord!" he said. "Good Lord, it can't be!" He stared into the thick darkness and saw an oval face, crowned by waving brown hair, that glinted gold in the highlights. He saw a sweet, womanly, tender, smiling mouth and a pair of grey eyes that seemed to burn into his own.

      "It can't be!" he said again. And yet it was!

CHAPTER IX

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THE PEACEMAKER

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      "Bless my soul!" said General Bartholomew. He had turned to the last page and looked at the signature. "Alicia Linden! I haven't heard a word of her for five and twenty years. A confoundedly handsome girl she was too. Hudson, where's my glasses?"

      "Here, General," said the young secretary.

      The General put them on.

      "My dear George," he read.

      It was a long letter, four pages closely written in Lady Linden's strong, almost masculine hand.

      " … I remember that when she visited me years ago, she told that me you were an old friend of her father's. This being so, I think you should combine with me in trying to bring these two wrong-headed young people together. I have quarrelled with Hugh Alston, so I can do nothing at the moment; but you, being on the spot so to speak, in London, and Hugh I understand also being in London … "

      "What the dickens is the woman drivelling about?" the General demanded. "Hudson!"

      "Yes, sir!"

      "Read this letter carefully, digest it, and then briefly explain to me what the dickens it is all about."

      The secretary took the letter and read it carefully.

      "This letter is from Lady Linden, of Cornbridge Manor House, Cornbridge. She is deeply interested in a young lady, Miss Joan Meredyth. At least—" Hudson paused.

      "Joan, pretty little