Pimpernel and Rosemary

"So you won't tell me?" he reiterated, and his voice sounded curiously harsh, quite different to his usual very pleasant, musical tones. Peter had the voice of a musician. It was deep in tone and beautifully modulated. Peter's voice had been one of the things about him that had captivated Rosemary's fancy in the past. Now, he spoke through his teeth, with that hateful cigarette in the long holder held between the corners of his lips. Rosemary tried to be flippant.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed, with a little broken laugh, "are you trying to play the role of the heavy father, Peter, or of the silent strong man? And now you are frowning just like the hero in one of Ethel M. Dell's books. When are you going to seize me by the wrist and whack me with a slipper?"

It was very easy to make Peter laugh. He was laughing now, and the scowl fled for the moment from his face.

"Don't play the fool, Rosemary," he said in his slangy, boyish way. "Tell me what Aunt Elza has been saying to you out here?"

"But you silly boy," she riposted, "There's nothing to tell."

Back came the scowl on Peter's face, darker than before.

"So," he said curtly, "I suppose that you and Aunt Elza and Anna have been discussing frocks for the past hour and a half."

"No, dear," she replied coolly, "only the arrangements for to-morrow's ball."

Whereupon Peter said "Damn!" and swung round on his heel, as if he meant to leave her there without another word. But for this move of his Rosemary was unprepared. She did not want Peter to go. Not just yet. She was perfectly loyal to him in her thoughts, and she was irrevocably determined not to break her promise to Jasper, but she was not going to let Peter go off to-day without some sort of explanation. She might not see him again after this-for weeks, for months, for years! So she called him back.

"Peter!" she cried.

He swung back and returned to her side. His deep, changeful eyes, which at times were the colour of the ocean on the Cornish coast, and at others recalled the dark tints of his Hungarian ancestors, looked strangely resentful still. But as his glance rested on Rosemary, wandered from her delicate face in the pearly shadow of her garden hat, along the contour of her graceful shoes, the resentful look fled. And Rosemary, glancing up, caught a momentary flash of that soul-holding gaze which had taken her captive that lovely night in June by the river, when she had lain crushed and bruised in his arms, the gaze which that other night in the Albert Hall box had filled her soul with abiding regret.

"What do you want me to tell you, Peter?" she asked in that stupid way that comes to the lips when the soul is stirred and the mind commands self-control.

"Nothing," he replied roughly, "that you don't want to."

"Peter," she retorted, "why are you so strange with me? One would think I had done something to offend you. You scarcely will speak to me; when you do you are so rough and so abrupt, as if-as if— Oh, I don't know," she went on rapidly, and her voice shook a little as she tried to avoid that memory conjuring glance of his. "It seems as if something had come between us, almost as if we were enemies."

Peter laughed at this, but his laugh sounded rather forced and harsh.

"Enemies!" he exclaimed. "Good God, no!"

"But something has happened, Peter," she insisted. "I cannot tell you how I find you changed."

"Well," he said curtly, "something did happen, you know, when you married Jasper."

"I don't mean that, Peter. I saw you in London after I was engaged, and you had not changed then. It is here-in this place-that you seem so different."

"You must admit the place gets on one's nerves," he said with a shrug.

"You must make allowances, Peter," she rejoined gently. "They are in such trouble."

"Are they?" he retorted.

"Why, you know they are!" And her voice rang with a note of indignant reproach. "How can you ask?"

"I ask because I don't know. You say that they-I suppose you mean Aunt Elza and Maurus and the kids-are in trouble. How should I know what you mean? Since I've been here they have done nothing but shout, dance and make plans for more dancing and shouting, and when I ask you anything you only tell me lies."

"Peter!"

"I beg your pardon, dear," he said with sudden gentleness. "I didn't mean to be caddish. But you know," he went on, harshly once more, "you did tell me that Jasper had gone to Budapest on business."

"Well?" she queried.

"Well! Knowing you to be truthful by nature, I am wondering why you should have told me such an unnecessary lie." Then, as Rosemary was silent, he insisted: "Won't you tell me, Rosemary?"

"You are talking nonsense, Peter," she replied obstinately. "There is nothing to tell."

"Which means that Jasper has told you-or insinuated-that I am not to be trusted."

She protested: "Certainly not!"

"Then," he concluded, "the mistrust comes out of your own heart."