"Nothing--nothing! I tell you that nothing has happened to me," cried Ella, with a vehemence that almost amounted to fierceness in her voice. "Would I be here with you now if anything had happened to me? tell me that. I came to you--ah! women have no guardian angels, but they have sisters who are equally good and pure, and you are my sister --my sister--better than all the angels that ever sang a dirge over a lost soul that they put forth no hand to save. You will not let me go, darling Phyllis, you will not let me go even if I tell you that I want to go. Don't believe me, Phyllis; I don't want to go--I don't want to be lost, and if I leave you I am lost. You will keep me, dear, will you not?"
"Until the end of the world," said Phyllis. "Come, dearest Ella, tell me what is the matter--why you have come to me in that lovely costume.
You look as if you were dressed for a bridal."
"A bridal--a bridal? What do you mean by that?" said Ella, with curious eagerness--a suggestion of suspicion was in her tone. She had loosed her hold upon the girl's arms.
Phyllis laughed. She put a hand round Ella's waist and led her to a sofa, saying:
"Let us sit down and talk it all over. That is the lace you told me you picked up at Munich. What a design--lilies!"
"The Virgin's flower--the Virgin's flower! I never thought of that," laughed Ella. "It is for you--not me, this lace. I shall tear it off and--"
"You shall do nothing of the kind," cried Phyllis. "I have heaps of lace--more than I shall ever wear. What a lovely idea that is of yours,--I'm sure it is yours,--sewing the diamonds around the cup of the lilies, like dewdrops. I always did like diamonds on lace. Some people would have us believe that diamonds should only be worn with blue velvet. How commonplace! Where have you been to-night?"
"Where have I been? I have been at home. Where should a good woman be in the absence of her husband, but at home--his home and her home?"
Ella laughed loud and long with her head thrown back on the cushion of the sofa, and the diamonds in her hair giving back flash for flash to the electric candles above her head. "Yes; I was at home--I dined at home, and, God knows why, I conceived a sudden desire to go to the opera,--Melba is the /Juliet/,--and forgetting that you were engaged to the Earlscourts--you told me last week that you were going, but I stupidly forgot, I drove across here to ask you to be my companion.
Oh, yes, I have been here since--since nine, mind that! nine--nine--ask the servants. When I heard that you were dining out I thought that I was lost--one cannot drive about the streets all night, can one? Ah!
I thought that God was against me now, as he ever has been; and as for my guardian angel--ah! our guardian angels are worse than the servants of nowadays who have no sense of responsibility. Thompson, your butler, is worth a whole heavenful of angels, for it was he who asked me if I would come in and wait for your return--ask him, if you doubt my word."
"Good Heavens, Ella, what do you say? Doubt your word--I doubt your word? You wound me deeply."
"Forgive me, my Phyllis. I don't quite know what I said. Ah, let me nestle here--here." She had put her head down to Phyllis' bare neck and was looking up to her face as a child might have done. "There is no danger here. Now pet me, and say that you forgive me for having said whatever I did say."
Phyllis laughed and put her lips down among the myriad diamonds that glowed amid the other's hair, like stars seen among the thick foliage of a copper beech.
"I forgive you for whatever you said," she cried. "I, too, have forgotten what it was; but you must never say so again. But had you really no engagement for to-night that you took that fancy for going to 'Romeo'?"
"No engagement? Had I no engagement, do you ask me?" cried Ella. "Oh, yes, yes! I had an engagement, but I broke it--I broke it--I broke it, and that is why I am here. Whatever may come of it, I am here, and here I mean to stay. I am safe here. At home I am in danger."
Phyllis wondered greatly what had come to her friend to make her talk in this wild strain.
"Where were you engaged?" she inquired casually. She had come to the conclusion that there was safety in the commonplace: she would not travel out of the region of commonplaces with Ella in her present state.
"Where was I engaged? Surely I told you. Didn't I say something about the opera--'Romeo and Juliet'?--that was to be the place, but I came to you instead. Ah, what have we missed! Was there ever such a poem written as 'Romeo and Juliet'? Was there ever such music as Gounod's?
