THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

greatest joke, so I didn't try to undeceive you. Fancy your believing that, all this time, though, and thinking about it!"

      "I've thought of it on an average once every three minutes," said Jack.

      "You're chaffing now, of course. Why, the person I hoped might be kind to me in England is an old lady—oh, but such a funny old lady!—who wanted me to be her companion, and said, no matter when I came, if it were years from now, I must let her know, for she would like to have me with her to help chase away a dragon of a maid she's afraid of. I met her only once, in the train the night before I arrived at Cannes; but she and I got to be the greatest friends, and her bulldog, Beau—."

      "Her bulldog, Beau!"

      "A perfect lamb, though he looks like a cross between a crocodile and a gnome. The old lady's name is Miss Paget—"

      "My aunt!"

      I stared at Jack, not knowing how to take this exclamation. The few Englishmen I met when mamma and I were together, or when I lived with the Milvaines, were rather fond of using that ejaculation when it was apparently quite irrelevant. If you told a youthful Englishman that you were not allowed to walk or bicycle alone in the Bois, he was as likely as not to say "My aunt!" In fact, whatever surprised him was apt to elicit this cry. I have known several young men who gave vent to it at intervals of from half to three-quarters of an hour; but I had never before heard Jack make the exclamation, so when I had looked at him and he had looked at me in an emotional kind of silence for a few seconds, I asked him, "Why 'My aunt'?"

      "Because she is my aunt."

      "Surely not my Miss Paget?"

      "I should think it highly improbable that your Miss Paget and my Miss Paget could be the same, if you hadn't mentioned her bulldog, Beau. There can't be a quantity of Miss Pagets going about the world with bulldogs named Beau. Only my Miss Paget never does go about the world. She hates travelling."

      "So does mine. She said that being in a train was no pursuit for a gentlewoman."

      "That sounds like her. She's quite mad."

      "She seemed very kind."

      "I'm glad she did—to you. She has seemed rather the contrary to me."

      "Oh, what did she do to you?"

      "Did her best to spoil my life, that's all—with the best intentions, no doubt. Still, by Jove, I thank her! If it hadn't been for my aunt I should never have seen—my sister."

      "Thank you. You're always kind—and polite. Do you mean it was because of her you took to what you call 'shuvving'?"

      "Exactly."

      "But I thought—I thought—"

      "What?"

      "I—don't dare tell you."

      "I should think you might know by this time that you can tell me anything. You must tell me!"

      "I thought it was the beautiful lady who was with you the first time you saw the battlement garden at Beaucaire, who ruined your life?"

      "Beautiful lady—battlement garden? Good heavens, what extraordinary things we seem to have been thinking about each other: I with my man in England; you with your beautiful lady—"

      "She's a different thing. You talked to me about her," I insisted. "Surely you must remember?"

      "I remember the conversation perfectly. I didn't explain my meaning as a professor demonstrates a rule in higher mathematics, but I thought you couldn't help understanding well enough, especially a vain little thing like you."

      "I, vain? Oh!"

      "You are, aren't you?"

      "I—well, I'm afraid I am, a little."

      "You could never have looked in the glass if you weren't. Didn't you see, or guess, that I was talking about an Ideal whom I had conjured into being, as a desirable companion in that garden? I can't understand from the way the conversation ran, how you could have helped it. When I first went to the battlement garden I was several years younger, steeped with the spirit of Provence and full of thoughts of Nicolete. I was just sentimental enough to imagine that such a girl as Nicolete was with me there, and always afterward I associated the vision of the Ideal with that garden. I said to myself, that I should like to come there again with that Ideal in the flesh. And then—then I did come again—with you."

      "But you said—you thought of her always—that because you couldn't have her—or something of the sort—"

      "Well, all that was no surprise to you, was it? You must have known perfectly well—ever since that night at Avignon when you let your hair down, anyhow, if not before, that I was trying desperately hard not to be an idiot about you—and not exactly radiant with joy in the thought that whoever the man was who would get you, it couldn't be I?"

      "O-oh!" I breathed a long, heavenly breath, that seemed to let all the sorrows and worries pour out of my heart, as the air rushed out of my lungs. "O-oh, you can't mean, truly and really, that you're in love with Me, can you?"

      "Surely it isn't news to you."

      "I should think it was!" I exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, I'm so happy!"

      "Another scalp—though a humble one?"

      "Don't be a beast. I'm so horribly in love with you, you know. It's been hurting so dreadfully."

      Then I rather think he said "My darling!" but I'm not quite sure, for I was so busy falling into his arms, and he was holding me so very, very tightly.

      We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, and not even thinking, but feeling—feeling. And the couriers' dining-room was a princess's boudoir in an enchanted palace. The grease spots were stars and moons that had rolled out of heaven to see how two poor mortals looked when they were perfectly happy. Just a poor chauffeur and a motor maid: but the world was theirs.

Chapter XXXII

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      After a while we talked again, and explained all the cross-purposes to each other, with the most interesting pauses in between the explanations. And Jack told me about himself, and Miss Paget.

      It seems that her only sister was his mother, and she had been in love with his father before he met the sister. The father's name was Claud, and Jack was named after him. It was Miss Paget's favourite name, because of the man she had loved. But the first Claud wasn't very lucky. He lost all his own money and most of his wife's, and died in South America, where he'd gone in the hope of making more. Then the wife, Jack's mother, died too, while he was at Eton. After that Miss Paget's house was his home. Whenever he was extravagant at Oxford, as he was sometimes, she would pay his debts quite happily, and tell him that everything she had would be his some day, so he was not to bother about money. Accordingly, he didn't bother, but lived rather a lazy life—so he said—and enjoyed himself. A couple of years before I met him he got interested, through a friend, in a newly invented motor, which they both thought would be a wonderful success. Jack tried to get his aunt interested, too, but she didn't like the friend who had invented it—seemed jealous of Jack's affection for him—and refused to have anything to do with the affair. Jack had gone so far, however, while taking her consent for granted, that he felt bound to go on; and when Miss Paget would have nothing to do with floating the new invention, Jack sold out the investments of his own little fortune (all that was left of his mother's money), putting everything at his friend's disposal. Miss Paget was disgusted with him for doing this, and when the motor wouldn't mote and the invention wouldn't float, she just said, "I told you so!"

      It was at this time, Jack went on to tell me, that Miss Paget bought Beau. She had had another dog, given her by Jack, which died, and she collected Beau herself. Only a few days after Beau's arrival, Jack went down into the country to see his aunt and talk things