"You are an angel!" says he at last, very sadly; yet he would not have wished her less than that.
"Don"t be absurd!" says t.i.ta most ungratefully.
She marches past him with her angry little head still upheld, but presently a word from him brings her to a standstill.
"Don"t be angry with me, t.i.ta," he is saying in a low tone. "I"m going away to-morrow."
"Ah, so you are!" says t.i.ta. Her sweet nature comes back to her.
Dear old Tom! And she has been saying such horrid things to him.
"Never mind me, Tom!" says she, holding out her hand to him. "I"m dreadfully cross sometimes, but I don"t ever mean it, really. And,"
smiling gently at him, "you _know_ that I love you!"
Hescott takes her hand. His heart seems very full--too full for words. Those words, "I love you!" He stoops and presses a kiss upon the little warm fingers now resting within his own. And without another word he leaves her.
He is hardly gone, when Rylton lays his hand upon her arm.
"Well," says he, his voice vibrating with anger. He had followed her, as has been said, with no idea of watching her, but with a curious longing to get near to her again. _Why,_ he could hardly have explained even to himself. The only thing he did know in that walk homeward was that he was most horribly, most unreasonably unhappy!
He had followed her and he had found her crying, or at least with the signs of tears upon her eyes, and had seen her cousin kissing her hand. A slight madness came over him then. Crying for her cousin, no doubt, because he must leave her to-morrow!
"Well!" His tone is abrupt, almost brutal. Yet even in this hour where all things point to her discomfiture he cannot get the victory over her.
"Well?" demands she in return, shaking her arm loose from his hold.
"You have been crying for him, no doubt--for your----" He pauses.
"My what?" asks t.i.ta. She is looking at him with fearless, wondering eyes.
"Your cousin," says Rylton, altering the phrase that would have made it in his anger, "your lover."
"I have not been crying because of Tom," says t.i.ta coldly, "though I am very sorry he is going. He loves me, I _think."_
"Do you?" says Rylton. A sarcastic smile crosses his lips "And you?
Do you love him? No doubt cousins are charming possessions. And so I find you crying because your dear possession is going, and because, no doubt, you were confiding to him what a desperate monster a husband can be."
There is hardly anything in his life afterwards that Rylton is so ashamed of as this; even now in the heat of the terrible anger that leads him so to forget himself, he cowers before the girl"s eyes.
"Is that what people do in _your_ set?" says she coldly--icily. "In the charmed circle within which your mother tells me I am not fit to enter? If so, I am glad I do not belong to it. Set your mind at ease, Maurice. I have not told Tom anything about you. I have not even told him what a----" She pauses. A flash from her eyes enters his. "I have told him nothing--nothing," says she, running past him into the house.
CHAPTER XIII.
HOW A LITTLE SPARRING IS DONE AMONGST THE GUESTS AT OAKDEAN; AND HOW TOM HESCOTT TELLS A STORY.
Meantime all the others are sitting out in the garden, gossiping to their hearts" content. They had tried tennis, but the courts are rather soft now; and though an Indian summer has fallen upon us, still it has not sufficed to dry up all the moisture caused by the late rains.
The little thatched hut at the end of the gardens, where the sun is now blazing, has drawn them all into a net, as it were. It is an off day, when there is no shooting, and the women are therefore jubilant, and distinctly in the ascendant. The elder Lady Rylton is not present, which adds to the hilarity of the hour, as in spite of her wonderful juvenility she is by no means a favourite. Miss Gower, however, _is--_which balances the situation.
"I don"t believe I ever felt so sorry for leaving any place," says Mrs. Chichester (who is always talking) with a soft but prolonged sigh--the sigh that is meant to be heard. She casts a languishing glance at Marryatt as she says this. He is _not_ invited to the next country house to which she is bound. He returns her glance fourfold, upon which she instantly dives behind Mrs. Bethune"s back, on the pretence of speaking to Margaret, but in reality to hide her face.
"Yes; I feel sorry too," says Colonel Neilson. "Where are you going?"
"To the Hastings"," says Mrs. Chichester, who has now emerged from behind Marian"s back, with the same sad face as before. _"You_ know her. Matilda Bruce!"
"Bless me! Has _she_ got married?" says Colonel Neilson, who is really the kindest-hearted man alive.
"Yes; quite a year ago."
Mrs. Bethune laughs her usual slow, cruel little laugh, that is always in some strange way so full of fascination. She, too, had known Matilda Bruce. "I am afraid poor Mr. Hastings must have had a great many refusals," says she. She looks at Mrs. Chichester. "So you are going there?"
"Yes, for my sins. Fred Hastings is a very old friend of mine."
"What a great many old friends you have," says Mrs. Bethune softly.
"Well, it is better to have old friends than no friends"--making the retort courteous, with a beaming smile.
"I"ve been staying at the Hastings", too," says Minnie Hescott, glad to show that she is within the sacred circle, even though it be on its outermost edge. "But----" She stops.
"I know. You needn"t go on," says Mrs. Chichester. "I"ve heard all about it. A terrible _menage,_ and no fires anywhere. Amy Stuart told me--she was staying with them last Christmas--that she often wished she was the roast joint in the oven, she felt so _withered up_ with cold."
"Well, marriage improves people," says Colonel Neilson, laughing.
"Let us hope it will enlarge Mrs. Hastings" mind as to the matter of fires."
"It will!" says Mrs. Chichester.
"But why? If----" says Margaret, leaning forward.
"Because marriage improves women, and"--Mrs. Chichester pauses, and lets her queer green eyes rest on Marryatt"s--"and does the other thing for men."
Marryatt is looking back at her as if transfixed. He is thinking of her words rather than of her. Has marriage disimproved _her_ husband? Has he been a brute to her? He knows so little--she has told him so little! At this moment it occurs to him that she has told him _nothing._
"What are you staring at?" asks she presently. "Is anything the matter with me? Have I straws in my hair?"
His answer is interrupted by Mr. Gower.
"Take it down," says he. "How can anyone tell nowadays what a woman has in her hair unless one sees?"
"Well, it"s not straws, any way," says Mrs. Chichester, with a shrug of her lean shoulders.
"It might be worse!" says Mr. Gower, who has always declared that Mrs. Chichester has dyed her hair. His tone, which is always sepulchral, attracts immediate attention, as all things sepulchral do. "And as for Matilda Bruce, I refuse to see why you should sit upon her with such determined cruelty. I know her, and I think her a most excellent wife, and house-wife, and--_mother!"_
"A mother!" says Margaret, who had known Mrs. Bruce slightly, but had not been in sympathy with her.
"Why, yes! She"s got a baby," says Mrs. Chichester. "Didn"t you hear? n.o.body _does_ hear much about them. For my part, I pity her about that baby! It"s so awkward to have children!"