The Keeper of the Door. Ethel M. Dell
compelled herself to answer him, or perhaps it was he who compelled.
In any case, with her head bent, her answer came.
"I had been thinking that perhaps you were getting fond of her, and—and—I should be sorry if that happened, because I know she isn't in earnest. I know she is only playing with you."
The words ran cut in a whisper. She dared not look at him. She could only watch with fascinated eyes the brown fingers that gripped the door-knob.
"She has told you that?" asked Max.
She quivered at the question. It was horribly difficult to answer. "I know it is so," she murmured.
She was thankful that he did not press her to be more explicit. He stood for a moment in silence; then: "Isn't it possible," he said in a very level tone, "for a woman to set out to catch a man and to end by being caught herself?"
"Not for Violet," said Olga.
"I wonder," said Max.
She looked up at him quickly, caught by something in his tone. His eyes, alert and green, looked straight into hers.
"Did you really think I was falling in love with her?" he said.
Olga hesitated.
"She thinks so?" he questioned.
"Yes." Against her will she answered. It was as if he wrung the word from her.
He smiled a grim smile. "Many thanks for your warning!" he said. "I take a deep interest in Miss Campion, as you seem to have divined. But the danger of my falling a victim to her charms is very remote. You need harbour no further anxieties on my account."
He opened the door as he spoke, and Olga passed out, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry that she had brought herself to speak.
She went upstairs to Violet and acquainted her with the fact of Major
Hunt-Goring's presence and its cause.
"I do wish Nick had been here," she said in conclusion.
"He may elect to stay for ever so long. I don't know what we shall do with him."
Violet, however, was by no means dismayed by the prospect. "Oh, I enjoy
Major Hunt-Goring," she said. "You leave him to me. I'll entertain him."
"Hateful man!" said Olga.
Whereat Violet laughed and pinched her cheek. "You know you like him!"
"I detest him!" said Olga quickly.
It was certainly with no excess of cordiality that a few minutes later she greeted her guest. He was standing in the hall with one arm in a sling when she and Violet descended the stairs, an immense man of about five-and-forty with a very decided military bearing and dark eyes of covert insolence.
Max was with him, and Olga experienced a very novel feeling of relief to see him there. She advanced and shook hands with extreme frigidity.
"I am sorry you have had an accident," she said.
"Very good of you," said Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were yachting in the Atlantic."
"Heaven forbid!" said Violet. "Yachting is simply another word for imprisonment to me. I told Bruce I should certainly drown myself if I went with them."
"I should like to introduce you to a form of yachting that is not imprisonment," said Hunt-Goring.
Violet laughed. "Oh, I should have to be mistress of the yacht for that."
"Even so," he rejoined significantly.
"And I shouldn't have any men on board with the exception of the sailors," she went on.
"And the captain," said Hunt-Goring.
"Oh, dear me, no! I would be my own captain."
"You'd be horribly bored before the first week was out," observed the major, as he followed her into the dining-room.
She laughed gaily. "There isn't a single man of my acquaintance in whose company I shouldn't be bored to extinction long before that."
"Oh, come!" he protested. "You don't speak from experience. You condemn us untried."
"I know you all too well," laughed Violet.
"You know me not at all," declared Hunt-Goring. "I appeal to Miss
Ratcliffe. Am I the sort of man to bore a woman?"
"I am no judge," said Olga somewhat hastily. "I never have time to be bored with anyone. Will you sit here, please? I am sorry to say my uncle is in town to-day."
"Where are the three boys?" asked Max.
Olga turned to him with relief. "They have gone for an all-day paper-chase with the Rectory crowd and taken lunch with them."
"Why didn't you go too?" he asked. "Too lazy?"
"Too busy," she returned briefly.
"That's only an excuse," said Max.
She glanced at him. "It's a sound one anyhow."
"What are you going to do this afternoon?" he asked.
"Mend."
"Mend what?"
"Stockings," said Olga.
"Great Scot!" said Max. "Do you mend the stockings of the entire family?"
"Including yours," said Olga.
"Oh, I say!" he protested. "That wasn't in the contract, was it? Pitch 'em into my room. I'll mend them myself or do without."
"One pair more or less doesn't make much difference," said Olga. "As to doing without—well, of course, you're a man or you wouldn't make such a suggestion."
"You've thrown that in my teeth before," he observed. "I think you might remember that I am hardly responsible for my sex. It's my misfortune, not my fault."
She smiled, her sudden brief smile, but made no rejoinder.
Major Hunt-Goring and Violet, who had undertaken to cut up his meal for him, were engrossed in a frothy conversation which it was obvious that neither desired to have interrupted.
Max glanced towards them before he abruptly started another subject with
Olga.
"How is Mrs. Briggs?"
Olga coloured hotly. "Oh, she seemed all right."
Max surveyed her rather pointedly. "Well? What had she got to say about me?"
"About you?" said Olga.
He laughed and looked away. "Even so, fair lady. I conclude it was something you would rather not repeat. I had already fathomed the fact that I was not beloved by Mrs. Briggs."
"It's your own fault," said Olga, speaking on the impulse to escape from a difficult subject. "You have such a knack of making all your patients afraid of you."
"Really?" said Max.
"Oh, don't be supercilious!" she said quickly. "You know it's true."
"It must be if you say so," he rejoined, "though there again it is more my misfortune than my fault. If my patients elect to make me the butt of their neurotic imagination, surely I am more to be pitied than blamed."
"No, I don't pity you at all," Olga said. "It's want of sympathy, you know. You go and do a splendid thing like—like—" She stopped suddenly.
"Please go on!" said Max. "Let's hear my good points, by all means!"
But