She seemed to stumble and fall sideways against the wall, and his arm went out to steady her.
"Oh!" she gasped. "And mama? What of mama?"
"We'll run away and get married." His words were as wild as her own. "We'll tell no one. We'll fly. And afterward--afterward--" But there he stuck.
He was sure now that for him she was the only woman in the world. "We will live abroad," he said heartily. "Ceylon, Yukon, or some place"--his imagination surely had limitations this evening--"and we will never come back."
"Mama will never leave us in peace," she declared. "Mama will find us wherever we go. Believe me, mama is quite set against the marriage. She will not have it. And she says if it goes forward _ever_, she'll surely take you away from me. I can't tell you what awful things she's told me--things you've said to her. Terrible things."
At that he paled and loosed her hand. Certainly the corridor was far too public for this kind of conversation; and yet all he could sense was the odor of probable triumph--the exaltation, the exhilaration of winning out.
Never mind the mother; that selfish, narrow-viewed American grass-widow, who had her little way of having her little way on all occasions and under all circumstances.
He was determined that Rosamond Veynol must go off with him, so that Nina--and everybody else, of course, might hear of it. All other considerations were forgotten. He seized her hand again.
"Listen, my dear girl," he pleaded. "We do love one another. We've said so a thousand times. Your mama doesn't want the match, and we've tried to break it off. We can't break it off. It's too strong for us. We both have found that out.
"When I suddenly saw you this morning I knew it was too strong for me. Now you know it, too. But we can't put it through in the open. So let us put it through in the only other way. Let's run off. And at once."
She lifted her eyes to his and he felt that she would help him to manage it somehow. He didn't stop an instant to consider that perhaps she, too, had her triumph to secure. Rosamond was human too.
There was the world, and her mother, and--Mrs. Darling. Oh, especially there was Mrs. Darling. Carleigh didn't know, and Nina didn't know. Nobody knew, in fact, but Rosamond Veynol.