The Imaginary Marriage. Henry St. John Cooper

blame—Marjorie!

      This Sunday morning Hugh in his study heard the chug-chug of a small and badly driven light car, and looked out of the window to see Marjorie stepping out of the vehicle.

      "Hugh," she said a few moments later, "I am so—so worried about you. I hate to think that all this trouble is through me. Aunt thinks I have gone to church, but I haven't. I got out the car, and drove here myself. Hugh, what can I do?"

      "There's one thing you can't do, child, and that is drive a car! There are heaps of things you can do. One of them is to go back and be happy, and not worry your little head over anything."

      "But I must, it is all because of me; and, Hugh, aunt has asked Tom to dinner to-day."

      "I hope he has a good dinner," said Hugh.

      "Hugh!" She looked at him. "It is no good trying to make light of it. I know you've been worried. I know you and—and Joan must have had a scene yesterday, or she wouldn't have left the house without even seeing me."

      "We had—a few words; I noticed that she did seem a little angry," he said.

      "Poor Joan! She was always so terribly proud; it was her poverty that made her proud and sensitive, I think."

      He nodded. "I think so, too. Poverty inclines her to take an exaggerated view of everything, Marjorie. She took it badly."

      The girl slipped her hand through his arm. "Is—is there anything I can do? It is all my fault, Hugh. Shall I confess to aunt, and then go and see Joan, and—"

      "Not on your life, you'll spoil everything. I am out of favour with the old lady; she will take Tom into favour in my place. All will go well with you and Tom, and after all that is what I worked for. With regard to Miss Joan Meredyth—" He paused.

      "Yes, Hugh, what about Joan? Oh, Hugh, now you have seen her, don't you think she is wonderful?"

      "I thought she had a very unpleasing temper," he said.

      "There isn't a sweeter girl in the world," Marjorie said.

      "I didn't notice any particular sweetness about her yesterday. She had reason, of course, to feel annoyed, but I think she made the most of it, however—" He paused.

      "Yes, Hugh, what shall you do? I know you have something in your mind."

      "You are right; I have. I am going to do the only thing that seems to me possible just now."

      "And that is?"

      "Seek out Miss Joan Meredyth, and ask her to become my wife in reality."

CHAPTER VII

       Table of Contents

MR. SLOTMAN ARRIVES AT A MISUNDERSTANDING

       Table of Contents

      At half-past nine on the Monday morning Miss Joan Meredyth walked into Mr. Slotman's office, and Mr. Slotman, seeing her, turned his head aside to hide the smirk of satisfaction.

      "Women," he said to himself, "are all alike. They give themselves confounded airs and graces, but when it comes to the point, they aren't born fools. She knows jolly well she wouldn't get another job in a hurry, and here she is."

      But Mr. Slotman made up his mind to go cautiously and carefully. He would not let Miss Meredyth witness his sense of satisfaction.

      "I am glad you have returned, Miss Meredyth. I felt sure that you would; there's no reason whatever we shouldn't get on perfectly well."

      The girl gave him a stiff little inclination of her head. She had done much personal violence to her sense of pride, yet she had come back because the alternative—worklessness, possible starvation and homelessness—had not appealed to her. And, after all, knowing Mr. Slotman to be what he was, she was forewarned and forearmed.

      So Joan came back and took up her old work, and Mr. Slotman practised temporarily a courtesy and a forbearance that were foreign to him. But Mr. Slotman had by no means given up his hopes and desires. Joan appealed to him as no woman ever had. He admired her statuesque beauty. He admired her air of breeding; he admired the very pride that she had attempted to crush him with.

      A woman like that could go anywhere, Slotman thought, and pictured it to himself, he following in her trail, and finding an entry into a society that would have otherwise resolutely shut him out. For like most men of his type, self made, egregious, and generally offensive, he had an inborn desire to get into Society and mingle with his betters.

      On the Monday morning there had been delivered to Hugh Alston by hand a little note from Marjorie; it was on pink paper, and was scented delicately. If he had not been so very much in love with Marjorie, the pink notepaper might have annoyed him, but it did not. The faint fragrance reminded him of her.

      She wrote a neat and exquisite hand; everything that she did was neat and exquisite, and remembering his hopes of not so long ago, he groaned a little dismally to himself as he reverently cut the envelope.

      "MY DEAR HUGH,

       "I have managed to get the address from aunt. It is 'Miss Joan Meredyth, care Mrs. Wenham, No. 7, Bemrose Square, London, W.C.' I have been thinking so much about what you said, and hoping that your plan may succeed. I am sure that you would be very, very happy together. … "

      (Hugh laughed unmusically.)

      "Tom has been here all the afternoon and evening, and aunt has been perfectly charming to him. Hugh, I know that everything is going to be right now, and I owe it all to you. You don't know how grateful I am, dear. I shall never, never forget your goodness and sweetness to me, dear old Hugh.

       "Your loving

       "MARJORIE."

      With something approaching reverent care, Hugh put the little pink-scented note into his pocket-book.

      To-night he would go to Town, to-morrow he would interview Miss Joan Meredyth. He would offer her no explanations, because the secret was not his own, and nothing must happen now that might upset or tell against Marjorie's happiness.

      He would express regret for what had happened, ask her to try and realise that no indignity and no insult had ever been intended against her, and then he would offer her his hand, but certainly not his heart. If she felt the sting of her poverty so, then perhaps the thought of his eight thousand a year would act as balm to her wounded feelings.

      At this time Hugh Alston had a very poor opinion of Miss Meredyth. He did not deny her loveliness. He could not; no man in his senses and gifted with eyesight could. But the placid prettiness of Marjorie appealed to him far more than the cold, disdainful beauty of the young woman he had called ungenerous, and who had in her turn called him a cad.

      It was Mrs. Wenham herself who opened the hall door of the house in Bemrose Square to Mr. Hugh Alston at noon on the day following.

      Though certainly not dressed in the height of fashion, and by no means an exquisite, Mr. Hugh Alston had that about him that suggested birth and large possessions. Mrs. Wenham beamed on him, cheating herself for a moment into the belief that he had come to add one more to the select circle of persons she alluded to as her "paying guests."

      Her face fell a little when he asked for Miss Meredyth.

      "Oh, Miss Meredyth has gone to work," she said.

      "To work?"

      "Yes, she's a clerk or something in the City. The office is that of Philip Slotman and Company, Number sixteen, Gracebury."

      "You think that I could see her there?" asked Hugh, who had little knowledge of City offices and their routine and rules, so far as hirelings are concerned.

      "I