The Golden Silence

								

"You mean, dear, you wouldn't have let me move? Now, do you think
there's any harm in a girl of my age being alone in a hotel? If you do,
it's dreadfully old-fashioned of you. I'm twenty-four."
During the progress of the case, it had been mentioned in court that the
claimant's daughter was twenty-nine (exactly Stephen Knight's age); but
Margot ignored this unfortunate slip, and hoped that Stephen and others
had forgotten.
"No actual harm. But in the circumstances, why be conspicuous? Weren't
you comfortable with Mrs. Middleton? She seemed a miraculously nice old
body for a lodging-house keeper, and fussed over you no end----"
"It was for your sake that I wanted to be in a good hotel, now our
engagement has been announced," explained Miss Lorenzi. "I didn't think
it suitable for the Honourable Stephen Knight's future wife to go on
living in stuffy lodgings. And as you've insisted on my accepting an
income of eighty pounds a month till we're married, I'm able to afford a
little luxury, dearest. I can tell you it's a pleasure, after all I've
suffered!--and I felt I owed you something in return for your
generosity. I wanted your fiancée to do you credit in the eyes of the
world."
Stephen bit his lip. "I see," he said slowly.
Yet what he saw most clearly was a very different picture. Margot as she
had seemed the day he met her first, in the despised South Kensington
lodgings, whither he had been implored to come in haste, if he wished to
save a wretched, starving girl from following her father out of a cruel
world. Of course, he had seen her in court, and had reluctantly
encountered her photograph several times before he had given up looking
at illustrated papers for fear of what he might find in them. But
Margot's tragic beauty, as presented by photographers, or as seen from
a distance, loyally seated at the claimant's side, was as nothing to the
dark splendour of her despair when the claimant was in his new-made
grave. It was the day after the burial that she had sent for Stephen;
and her letter had arrived, as it happened, when he was thinking of the
girl, wondering whether she had friends who would stand by her, or
whether a member of his family might, without being guilty of bad taste,
dare offer help.
Her tear-blotted letter had settled that doubt, and it had been so
despairing, so suggestive of frenzy in its wording, that Stephen had
impulsively rushed off to South Kensington at once, without stopping to
think whether it would not be better to send a representative combining
the gentleness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent, and armed for
emergencies with a blank cheque.
Margot's hair, so charmingly dressed now, folding in soft dark waves on
either side her face, almost hiding the pink-tipped ears, had been
tumbled, that gloomy afternoon six weeks ago, with curls escaping here
and there; and in the course of their talk a great coil had fallen down