Chapter XXXIV

*

When Lee and Renier, locked in each other's arms, stood in the forest primeval, they were mistaken in imagining themselves to be unobserved.

A short half-hour before, Mary Darling had received a proposal of marriage. But Mr. Sam Langham, usually so worldly-wise, had erred, perhaps, in his choice of time and place. Whatever a huge kitchen, bright with sunlight upon burnished copper, may be, it is not a romantic place. And, worse than this, Mary herself was not in a romantic mood. Certain supplies due by the morning express had not arrived. Chef was at the telephone shouting broken French to the butcher in Carrytown; one of the kitchen-maids had come down with an aching tooth, and the other had been sent upon an errand from which she should have long since returned.

"Oh," exclaimed Mary, as Mr. Langham entered, smiling, "everything is in such a mess! I don't believe there's going to be any lunch to-day for any one. And I think I shall have a nervous breakdown!"

"I told you you would long ago," said Langham, "if you didn't rest more and take things easier. What does it matter if things go wrong once in a while? And if there isn't going to be any lunch, I'm glad, for one. I was thinking of not eating mine, anyway. And if I'm not hungry, you can be pretty sure that nobody else is hungry. I tell you it hurts me to see you work so hard. I admire it and I bow down, but it hurts. You tell Chef to do the best he can, and you come for a brisk walk with me. We'll walk up an appetite, and—"

"I can't possibly," said Mary. "I've got to stand by."

"Then you go for a walk and I'll stand by. Only trust me. I'll see that nobody goes hungry."

She did not appear to have heard his offer, and Mr. Langham spoke again, with a sudden change of tone.

"I'd like to take you out of this. I'd like to make everything in the world easy for you, if you would only let me. But you know that. You've known it all along. And knowing it, you've never even shown that it interested you; and so I suppose it's folly for me to mention it. But a man can't give up all his hopes of happiness in this world without even stating them, can he? I've hoped that you might get to care a little about me—"

Mary interrupted him with considerable impatience.

"Really," she said, "with Chef shouting at the telephone, and all, I don't know what you are driving at."

At that Mr. Langham looked so hurt and so unhappy and woebegone that Mary was touched with remorse.

"I didn't realize you were in earnest," she said. "I'm sorry I've hurt your feelings, but it's no use. I'm sorry—awfully sorry; but it's no use."

"I'm sorry, too," said Langham; "sorry I spoke; sorrier there was no use in speaking; sorriest of all that I'm no good to any one. But as long as I had to come a cropper, why, I'm glad it was for no one less wonderful than you. Will you let things be as they were? I won't bother you about my personal feelings ever again by a look or a word."