"Here is your snuff-box," she said to the Cardinal.
The old man put down his Breviary (he was seated by an open
window, getting through his office), and smiled at the snuff
box fondly, caressing it with his finger. Afterwards, he shook
it, opened it, and took a pinch of snuff.
"Where did you find it?" he enquired.
"It was found by that Mr. Marchdale," she said, "in the road,
outside the gate. You must have let it drop this morning, when
you were walking with Emilia."
"That Mr. Marchdale?" exclaimed the Cardinal. "What a
coincidence."
"A coincidence--?" questioned Beatrice.
"To be sure," said he. "Was it not to Mr. Marchdale that I
owed it in the first instance?"
"Oh--? Was it? I had fancied that you owed it to me."
"Yes--but," he reminded her, whilst the lines deepened about
his humorous old mouth, "but as a reward of my virtue in
conspiring with you to convert him. And, by the way, how is
his conversion progressing?"
The Cardinal looked up, with interest.
"It is not progressing at all. I think there is no chance of
it," answered Beatrice, in a tone that seemed to imply a
certain irritation.
"Oh--?" said the Cardinal.
"No," said she.
"I thought he had shown 'dispositions'?" said the Cardinal.
"That was a mistake. He has shown none. He is a very tiresome
and silly person. He is not worth converting," she declared
succinctly.
"Good gracious!" said the Cardinal.
He resumed his office. But every now and again he would pause,
and look out of the window, with the frown of a man meditating
something; then he would shake his head significantly, and take
snuff.
Peter tramped down the avenue, angry and sick.
Her reception of him had not only administered an instant
death-blow to his hopes as a lover, but in its ungenial
aloofness it had cruelly wounded his pride as a man. He felt
snubbed and humiliated. Oh, true enough, she had unbent a
little, towards the end. But it was the look with which she
had first greeted him--it was the air with which she had waited
for him to state his errand--that stung, and rankled, and would
not be forgotten.
He was angry with her, angry with circumstances, with life,
angry with himself.
"I am a fool--and a double fool--and a triple fool," he said.
"I am a fool ever to have thought of her at all; a double fool
ever to have allowed myself to think so much of her; a triple
and quadruple and quintuple idiot ever to have imagined for a
moment that anything could come of it. I have wasted time
enough. The next best thing to winning is to know when you are
beaten. I acknowledge myself beaten. I will go back to
England as soon as I can get my boxes packed."