And he started as if he had been shot. "I'm coming, madam," he called up, obsequiously. "I'll be with you in one minute!"
"Now for it," he thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I knew what was coming next!"
The room was dark, but when he got a light he saw the statue standing in the centre of the room, her hood thrown back, and the fur-lined mantle hanging loosely about her; the face looked stern and terrible under its brilliant tint.
"Have you made your choice?" she demanded.
"Choice!" he said. "I haven't any choice left me!"
"It is true," she said triumphantly. "Your friends have deserted you; mortals are banded together to seize and disgrace you: you have no refuge but with me. But time is short. Come, then, place yourself within the shelter of these arms, and, while they enfold you tight in their marble embrace, repeat after me the words which complete my power."
"There's no partickler hurry," he objected. "I will directly. I--I only want to know what will happen when I've done it. You can't have any objection to a natural curiosity like that."
"You will lose consciousness, to recover it in balmy Cyprus, with Aphrodite (no longer cold marble, but the actual goddess, warm and living), by your side! Ah! impervious one, can you linger still? Do you not tremble with haste to feel my breath fanning your cheek, my soft arm around your neck? Are not your eyes already dazzled by the gleam of my golden tresses?"
"Well, I can't say they are; not at present," said Leander. "And, you see, it's all very well; but, as I asked you once before, how are you going to _get_ me there? It's a long way, and I'm ten stone, if I'm an ounce!"
"Heavy-witted youth, it is not your body that will taste perennial bliss."
"And what's to become of that, then?" he asked, anxiously.
"That will be left here, clasped to this stone, itself as cold and lifeless."
"Oh!" said Leander, "I didn't bargain for that, and I don't like it."
"You will know nothing of it; you will be with me, in dreamy grottoes strewn with fragrant rushes and the new-stript leaves of the vine, where the warm air woos to repose with its languorous softness, and the water as it wells murmurs its liquid laughter. Ah! no Greek would have hesitated thus."
"Well, I ain't a Greek; and, as a business man, you can't be surprised if I want to make sure it's a genuine thing, and worth the risk, before I commit myself. I think I understand that it's the gold ring which is to bind us two together?"
"It is," she said; "by that pure and noble metal are we united."
"Well," said Leander, "that being so, I should wish to have it tested, else there might be a hitch somewhere or other."
"Tested!" she cried; "what is that?"
"Trying it, to see if it's real gold or not," he said. "We can easily have it done."
"It is needless," she replied, haughtily. "I will not suffer my power to be thus doubted, nor that of the pure and precious metal through which I have obtained it!"
Leander might have objected to this as an example of that obscure feat, "begging the question;" for, whether the metal _was_ pure and precious, was precisely the point he desired to ascertain. And this desire was quite genuine; for, though he saw no other course before him but that upon which the goddess insisted, he did wish to take every reasonable precaution.
"For all I know," he reasoned in his own mind, "if there's anything wrong with that ring, I may be left 'igh and dry, halfway to Cyprus; or she may get tired of me, and turn me out of those grottoes of hers! If I must go with her, I should like to make things as safe as I could."
"It won't take long," he pleaded; "and if I find the ring's real gold, I promise I won't hold out any longer."
"There is no time," she said, "to indulge this whim. Would you mock me, Leander? Ha! did I not say so? Listen!"
The private bell was ringing loudly. Leander rushed to the window, but saw no one. Then he heard the clang of the shop bell, as if the person or persons had discovered that an entrance was possible there.
"The guards!" said the statue. "Will you wait for them, Leander?"
"No!" he cried. "Never mind what I said about the ring; I'll risk that.
Only--only, don't go away without me.... Tell me what to say, and I'll say it, and chance the consequences!"
"Say, 'Aphrodite, daughter of Olympian Zeus, I yield; I fulfil the pledge; I am thine!'"
"Well," he thought, "here goes. Oh, Matilda, you're responsible for this!" And he advanced towards the white extended arms of the goddess.
There were hasty steps outside; another moment and the door would be burst open.
"Aphrodite, daughter of----" he began, and recoiled suddenly; for he heard his name called from without in a voice familiar and once dear to him.
"Leander, where are you? It's all dark! Speak to me; tell me you've done nothing rash! Oh, Leander, it's Matilda!"
That voice, which a short while back he would have given the world to hear once more, appalled him now. For if she came in, the goddess would discover who she was, and then--he shuddered to think what might happen then!
Matilda's hand was actually on the door. "Stop where you are!" he shouted, in despair; "for mercy's sake, don't come in!"
[Illustration: "STOP WHERE YOU ARE!... FOR MERCY'S SAKE, DON'T COME IN!"]
"Ah! you are there, and alive!" she cried. "I am not too late; and I _will_ come in!"
And in another instant she burst into the room, and stood there, her tear-stained face convulsed with the horror of finding him in such company.
THE THIRTEENTH TRUMP
XIV.
"Your adversary having thus secured the lead with the last trump, you will be powerless to prevent the bringing-in of the long suit."
ROUGH'S _Guide to Whist._
"What! thinkest thou that utterly in vain Jove is my sire, and in despite my will That thou canst mock me with thy beauty still?"
_Story of Cupid and Psyche._
Leander, when he wrote his distracted appeal to Matilda, took it for granted that she had recognized the statue for something of a supernatural order, and this, combined with his perplexed state of mind, caused him to be less explicit than he might have been in referring to the goddess's ill-timed appearance.
But, unfortunately, as will probably have been already anticipated, the only result of this reticence was, that Matilda saw in his letter an abject entreaty for her consent to his marriage with Ada Parkinson, to avoid legal proceedings, and, under this misapprehension, she wrote the line that abandoned all claims upon him, and then went on with her accounts, which were not so neatly kept that day as usual.
What she felt most keenly in Leander's conduct was, that he should have placed the ring, which to all intent was her own, upon the finger of another. She could not bear to think of so unfeeling an act, and yet she thought of it all through the long day, as she sat, outwardly serene, at her high desk, while her attendants at her side made up sprays for dances and wreaths for funerals from the same flowers.
And at last she felt herself urged to a course which, in her ordinary mind, she would have shrunk from as a lowering of her personal dignity: she would go and see her rival, and insist that this particular humiliation should be spared her. The ring was not Leander's to dispose of--at least, to dispose of thus; it was not right that any but herself should wear it; and, though the token could never now be devoted to its rightful use, she wanted to save it from what, in her eyes, was a kind of profanation.
She would not own it to herself, but there was a motive stronger than all this--the desire to relieve her breast of some of the indignation which was choking her, and of which her pride forbade any betrayal to Leander himself.