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CHAPTER XXII

THRUST AND PARRY

Plague on't that he should return to tease me just now.
-SHERIDAN.

LORD YERINGTON's and Mr. Mansur's eyes had followed Philida as she vanished into the Italian garden. From there the refrain of a song floated back to them at intervals. Their gaze met, though neither moved, each awaiting the other's action. The situation, however, was interrupted. The duchess spoke to Yerington and, as he responded, Mansur wheeled about and sought the spot whence Philida's voice came to them in snatches.

Yerington watched Mr. Mansur, as he drew nearer to the figure flitting amongst the flowers. When his replies became absent and wide of the mark, the duchess dismissed him with a laugh.

"La," she said, "go to her, you oaf!"

With a hasty bow he obeyed her, not waiting to make a compliment or an excuse.

In the meantime Philida was standing beneath the Italian pergola in a frame of roses, the sun flecking her with light.

Mr. Mansur could not have chosen a worse moment for his approach, for a womanish impulse possessed her to vent on him a little of what Lord Yerington had made her suffer.

"I wonder you come, Mr. Mansur, when 'tis my humour to be alone," she said wilfully, half turning from him.

He stood before her, his hat in his hand, all his

ready phrases flown. His love for her was so honest that, despite himself, it made him honest. He was baffled by a sense of helpless adoration. This told in his eyes as he looked at her. His was a dark, strong face, and attractive to many women in its masterfulness, but at this moment it moved Philida to the point of exasperation. Most women are at bottom tyrants until love tames them and, sometimes, even then.

Lady Philida picked the rose she held in her fingers to pieces, petal by petal, while Mansur watched her.

Prithee, have you no tongue, sir?" she asked at length, with a glance from her blue eyes with their dark pencillings.

He pointed to the rose.

"See," he said, "you've torn it bit by bit and yet, for all that, its heart was golden."

She twisted the stem about in her fingers, pretending not to understand.

"So it is," she said indifferently. "Yet how much more lovely was the rose when its heart was hidden! Now it has neither perfume nor beauty." She threw it carelessly aside. "Your phrases are so deep, Mr. Mansur, I protest I cannot follow you." She flung a sudden, startling contradictory smile at him.

Dazed by it, Mr. Mansur's head swam. instant he could have sworn aloud.

The next

Lord Yerington had turned a corner by a stone urn and was approaching them with his confident indolence. Then Mansur knew that the smile directed toward him was but one of a woman's ready subterfuges to disguise her real thought. Instinctively he was aware that she had already seen Lord Yerington's approach when she had given that glance at him. But, perceiving this, he took instant advantage of the situation. He, too, played for Lord Yerington.

One arm upon the support of the pergola, he leaned nearer to her, his manner full of tender gallantry.

"But upon that theme I could speak for ever, my only excuse being my earnestness," he said, as if continuing a conversation.

Lord Yerington overheard.

"I hope I'm not intruding," he said, nevertheless advancing without a pause.

Yet, when he had gained Philida's side, he bowed and looked from Mansur's lowering face to hers, as if he questioned his right to linger.

Philida did not reply in words. She turned and walked slowly forward, the gentlemen sauntering beside her. The two men exchanged glances over her head. About Mr. Mansur's mouth the dangerous dimples came and went. Lord Yerington's face was debonair.

"I had understood," said Mr. Mansur, his voice studiously level and unemphatic, "that your lordship had an engagement with Lord Burroughs, which honour did not suffer you to break.”

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Honour?" repeated Yerington, as if he had not heard aright. "Gad, Mr. Mansur is so nice in such matters himself that if he speaks of honour, he speaks with authority; but my engagement with Lord Burroughs is not pressing. It was not rounded by a date."

Mr. Mansur's eyes flickered, but his voice was even. "There are some engagements to which circumstances set a date."

Yerington laughed.

"It was not so nominated in the bond, and delicate as is Mr. Mansur in these questions of honour, none of my house have needed tutoring on this point."

Something unusual in their tone impressed Philida. It had been taking all her self-control to maintain her at

titude of indifference, but a note in Lord Yerington's voice roused a vague alarm in her.

"Are not you

"I thought, I" she stammered. gentlemen friends, schoolfellows, if I mistake not?" Lord Yerington switched off the head of a blossom with his cane as he passed.

"True, true, Lady Philida," he answered. "Friendship is a rare and sacred thing, is it not?, It binds men close in loyalty. Ask Mr. Mansur."

Silence followed. Mr. Mansur's face was black.

Ours dates back a score of years to dear old schooldays," continued Lord Yerington. "Rare days those, eh, Mansur? I must tell you, Lady Philida, that this modest friend of mine, though I'll be bound he's not over fond of talking of it, has a pretty taste in literature. 'Tis letters he prefers, if I remember."

66

Madame de Sévigné's letters?" asked Philida, conscious there was an enigmatic intensity in the situation, and instinctively seeking to lighten it. Characteristically she was forgetting her own emotion in her desire to bring about a better understanding.

"What say you to that, Mansur?" gibed Yerington over her head. "No, Mr. Mansur's not particular about style. 'Tis matter he prefers."

Mansur spoke:

66 You may not have noted, Lady Philida, that Lord Yerington possesses a pretty wit in the art of juggling with phrases. Upon my life, let him but turn an agreement over upon his tongue a time or two, though it might read as straight as the plain entry in a bettingbook, when he has done with it, it possesses a new complexion and its outlines and distances grow as deceptive as objects seen in a fog."

Mr. Mansur's thrust had gone home and Lord Yerington was impotent to parry it. Its burn lingered, stinging

in the open wound of his honour as he read it by his code. Was he, indeed, juggling with the terms of the wager? The doubt cut him to the quick. But it did more. It whipped into fury his wrath against the man who had trapped him. Having stooped to contemplate revenge, the desire for it grew more potent. He looked down at the girl beside him. He felt that he had been befooled, deceived by her poses, as he had been by Lady Caroline's. She danced in the torrent of his anger as a leaf eddies upon a current. Mansur was growing threateningly bold. He resolved to silence him, that he might be left a free hand to play out the game upon which he was bent. His heart at that moment was as ruthless and as worthless as the man with whom he parried. The whole, reckless gambler's heart of him he was staking in this venture, thrusting all consideration aside, except the one upon which he was concentrated. He was not reckoning upon any love Lady Philida might bear him. In the mood in which he then was, he would not have believed in such a love had she protested it. Had faith in such a love been possible to him at that moment, his revenge would have been as impossible.

"A whimsical incident recurs to my mind at this moment," he began, so entirely without relevance that Mansur perceived in his remark a flank movement and listened all upon the defensive. ''Slife, it was a most droll circumstance that two such ragged knaves should have been the outposts of Master Cupid!" He wiped his lips daintily with his lace handkerchief.

Philida regarded him with troubled eyes.

"It happened on the road as we came here, and I protest, it was a vastly pleasant diversion from the cavernous old coach. I was half asleep when two shots sounded that put me on the sudden wide awake. My

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