Eve was too furious to pay attention to anything but her deleterious thoughts. As she walked on the terrace, to which she had fled in quest of solitude, her teeth were set and her blue eyes glowed belligerently. As Miss Peavey would have put it in one of her colloquial moods, she was mad clear through. For Eve was a girl of spirit, and there is nothing your girl of spirit so keenly resents as being made a fool of, whether it be by Fate or by a fellow human creature. Eve was in the uncomfortable position of having had this indignity put upon her by both. But, while as far as Fate was concerned she merely smouldered rebelliously, her animosity towards Psmith was vivid in the extreme.
A hot wave of humiliation made her writhe as she remembered the infantile guilelessness with which she had accepted the preposterous story he had told her in explanation of his presence at Blandings in another man’s name. He had been playing with her all the time—fooling her—and, most unforgivable crime of all, he had dared to pretend that he was fond of her and—Eve’s face burned again—to make her—almost—fond of him. How he must have laughed . . .
Well, she was not beaten yet. Her chin went up and she began to walk quicker. He was clever, but she would be cleverer. The game was not over . . .
“Hallo!”
A white waistcoat was gleaming at her side. Polished shoes shuffled on the turf. Light hair, brushed and brilliantined to the last possible pitch of perfection, shone in the light of the stars. The Hon. Freddie Threepwood was in her midst.
“Well, Freddie?” said Eve resignedly.
“I say,” said Freddie in a voice in which self-pity[p. 284] fought with commiseration for her. “Beastly shame you aren’t coming to the hop.”
“I don’t mind.”
“But I do, dash it! The thing won’t be anything without you. A bally wash-out. And I’ve been trying out some new steps with the Victrola.”
“Well, there will be plenty of other girls there for you to step on.”
“I don’t want other girls, dash them. I want you.”
“That’s very nice of you,” said Eve. The first truculence of her manner had softened. She reminded herself, as she had so often been obliged to remind herself before, that Freddie meant well. “But it can’t be helped. I’m only an employée here, not a guest. I’m not invited.”
“I know,” said Freddie. “And that’s what makes it so dashed sickening. It’s like that picture I saw once, ‘A Modern Cinderella.’ Only there the girl nipped off to the dance—disguised, you know—and had a most topping time. I wish life was a bit more like the movies.”
“Well, it was enough like the movies last night when . . . Oh!”
Eve stopped. Her heart gave a sudden jump. Somehow the presence of Freddie was so inextricably associated in her mind with limp proposals of marriage that she had completely forgotten that there was another and a more dashing side to his nature, that side which Mr. Keeble had revealed to her at their meeting in Market Blandings on the previous afternoon. She looked at him with new eyes.
“Anything up?” said Freddie.
Eve took him excitedly by the sleeve and drew him farther away from the house. Not that there was any need to do so, for the bustle within continued unabated.
[p. 285]“Freddie,” she whispered, “listen! I met Mr. Keeble yesterday after I had left you, and he told me all about how you and he had planned to steal Lady Constance’s necklace.”
“Good Lord!” cried Freddie, and leaped like a stranded fish.
“And I’ve got an idea,” said Eve.
She had, and it was one which had only in this instant come to her. Until now, though she had tilted her chin bravely and assured herself that the game was not over and that she was not yet beaten, a small discouraging voice had whispered to her all the while that this was mere bravado. What, the voice had asked, are you going to do? And she had not been able to answer it. But now, with Freddie as an ally, she could act.
“Told you all about it?” Freddie was muttering pallidly. He had never had a very high opinion of his Uncle Joseph’s mentality, but he had supposed him capable of keeping a thing like that to himself. He was, indeed, thinking of Mr. Keeble almost the identical thoughts which Mr. Keeble in the first moments of his interview with Eve in Market Blandings had thought of him. And these reflections brought much the same qualms which they had brought to the elder conspirator. Once these things got talked about, mused Freddie agitatedly, you never knew where they would stop. Before his mental eye there swam a painful picture of his Aunt Constance, informed of the plot, tackling him and demanding the return of her necklace. “Told you all about it?” he bleated, and, like Mr. Keeble, mopped his brow.
“It’s all right,” said Eve impatiently. “It’s quite all right. He asked me to steal the necklace, too.”
“You?” said Freddie, gaping.
“Yes.”
[p. 286]“My Gosh!” cried Freddie, electrified. “Then was it you who got the thing last night?”
“Yes it was. But . . .”
For a moment Freddie had to wrestle with something that was almost a sordid envy. Then better feelings prevailed. He quivered with manly generosity. He gave Eve’s hand a tender pat. It was too dark for her to see it, but he was registering renunciation.
“Little girl,” he murmured, “there’s no one I’d rather got that thousand quid than you. If I couldn’t have it myself, I mean to say. Little girl . . .”
“Oh, be quiet!” cried Eve. “I wasn’t doing it for any thousand pounds. I didn’t want Mr. Keeble to give me money . . .”
“You didn’t want him to give you money!” repeated Freddie wonderingly.
“I just wanted to help Phyllis. She’s my friend.”
“Pals, pardner, pals! Pals till hell freezes!” cried Freddie, deeply moved.
“What are you talking about?”
“Sorry. That was a sub-title from a thing called ‘Prairie Nell,’ you know. Just happened to cross my mind. It was in the second reel where the two fellows are . . .”
“Yes, yes; never mind.”
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