The Beloved Stranger - By Grace Livingston Hill Page 0,60
uplifted eyebrows. “Really! I shouldn’t recognize any such word as that between us! That isn’t what marriage means. Not in this age and generation! If you mean am I going down to dinner, I certainly am. If you don’t want to go with me, that’s entirely up to you. I am sure Hurley Kirkwood will be delighted to take me in to dinner. I can tell people you are seasick, you know. But as this is the first ocean voyage I’ve ever had, and maybe the last one I’ll ever get, I intend to enjoy every minute of it in spite of your disagreeableness.”
“You don’t care what happens to me and my business, then? I thought you professed to love me!” he said after a long silence during which he went and stared out the porthole.
“Why, I supposed I did, too,” said Arla lightly, “but as for caring what happens to you and your business at such a price as you demand, I’m not so sure that I do.”
He was still a much longer time now, staring out at the endless waves of the ocean.
“Then do I understand that you refuse to comply with my request and stay out of sight during the voyage?”
“Yes, I do!” said Arla coolly, taking up her hand and mirror and examining her profile carefully and the wave of her lovely gold hair.
“But why, Arla? You have always wanted me to get on. You know I want it for you as much as for myself—!”
“Oh!” interrupted Arla in a surprised voice. “No, I didn’t know that!” Her tone was sweet and innocent. “Did you want it for me as much as for yourself when you were going to marry Sherrill Cameron?”
He gave a quick angry exclamation.
“Can’t you leave her out of the question now we’re definitely done with her?” he asked desperately.
“I’m sorry,” said Arla. “I’d like to, but the trouble is she somehow won’t be left out. You see, she was there, and I’m not so sure she’s definitely out of it either.”
“Well, then, if you must bring her in, yes, I did do it for your sake as much as my own. I thought an alliance with her would bring the needed funds and position, and later, well—there are such things as divorces, you know!”
She turned a steely eye to him.
“Carter, if you had been brought up in the social world of today, there might be some excuse for your daring to say a thing like that to me, but both you and I had decent mothers who didn’t believe in such things, and when you say that, you are insulting both Miss Cameron and myself. You said something of that sort last night, I remember, just before you flung me off in the corner and went out to marry your other bride. I don’t know how I ever forgave it in you enough to be willing to marry you except that I thought you were beside yourself and didn’t realize what you were saying. It was preposterous, you know! And if I didn’t think you were still rather beside yourself, I certainly wouldn’t stay here with you now and listen to such talk.”
“Very well, now, if you are so interested in me and my business,” he said at last, “what would you suggest that we do? You know the facts, that I need a large sum of money to tide me over, and if I can get it I can keep my business floating till this depression is past. If I don’t, I either have to give up and lose everything or else probably go to jail!”
“I would not go to jail!” said Arla. He gave her a sudden quick startled look. But Arla went steadily on talking, not looking at him. “I would take the next boat back as soon as I landed and arrange to give over my business interests in such a way that while it might be a total loss of all that has been gained through the last three years, your name would be cleared, and you could go honorably into some more modest business and have a chance of making good. You will remember I happen to have been present in the office when an offer was made to you which would have made that possible!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the man angrily. “I’m not an utter fool!”
“Are you sure?” asked the woman. “Sometimes I wonder!”
After a long silence the man spoke again in a voice of smoldering wrath: