"Yes, I think so, and Randal Gower, and some others."
"I should like to see them very much."
She has grown quite animated.
"The only one you _don"t_ want to see, in my opinion, is your husband," says Margaret, with a little reproach.
"I want to see him quite as much as he wants to see me," says t.i.ta.
"By-the-bye, you ought to tell James about his coming. It is half-past three now."
"He"s always late," says Margaret lazily.
But even as she says it, both t.i.ta and she are conscious of the approach of a man"s footstep, that a.s.suredly is not the footstep of James.
"I told you--I told you!" cries t.i.ta, springing to her feet, and wringing her hands. "Oh! _why_ didn"t you give some directions to James? Oh, Margaret! Oh! _what_ shall I do? If I go out there I shall meet him face to face. Oh! why do people build rooms with only one door in them? I"m undone." She glances wildly round her, and in the far distance of this big drawing-room espies a screen. "That,"
gasps she, _"that_ will do! I"ll hide myself behind that. Don"t keep him long, Meg darling! Hurry him off. Say you"ve got the cholera--_any_ little thing like that--and get rid of him."
"t.i.ta--you can"t. It is impossible. He will probably say things, and you won"t like them--and----"
"I shan"t listen! I shall put my fingers in my ears. Of _course"_--indignantly--"I shan"t listen."
"But--t.i.ta--good gracious----"
Her other words are lost for ever. The handle of the door is turned.
t.i.ta, indeed, has barely time to scramble behind the screen when Sir Maurice is announced by James, who is electrified by the glance his mistress casts at him.
"I expect I"m a little early," says Rylton, shaking hands with Margaret--apologizing in his words but not in his tone. He is of course unaware of the heart-burnings in Margaret"s breast, or the apology would have been more than a mere society speech. "You are alone?"
Here poor Margaret"s purgatory begins--Margaret, who is the soul of truth.
"Well, you can see!" says she, spreading out her hands and giving a comprehensive glance round her--a glance that rests as if stricken on the screen. What awful possibilities lie behind that!
"Yes, yes, of course. Yet I fancied I heard voices."
"How curious are our fancies!" says poor Margaret, taking the tone of an advanced Theosophist, even while her heart is dying within her.
"Where is t.i.ta?" asks Rylton suddenly. To Margaret"s guilty conscience the direct question sounds like an open disbelief in her former answers. But Rylton had asked it thus abruptly merely because he felt that if he lingered over it it never might be asked; and he _must_ know. "Where is t.i.ta?" asks he again. Where indeed!
"She is here--at least," hurriedly, almost frantically, _"with me,_ you know; staying with me. _Staying,_ you know."
"Yes, I know. Gone out, perhaps?"
"No, n--o. In retirement," says Margaret wretchedly. _Is_ she listening? How can she answer him all through? If he speaks _against_ her, what is she to do? If she has in all justice to condemn her in some little ways, will she bear it? Will she keep her fingers in her ears?
"Ah--headache, I suppose," says Rylton.
"Yes; her head aches sometimes," says Margaret, who now feels she is fast developing into a confirmed liar.
"It usen"t to ache," says he.
At this Miss Knollys grows a little wild.
"Used it not?" says she. "You remember, perhaps; I don"t! But I am certain she would object to being made a subject for cross-examination. If you are anxious about her health, you need not be. She is well, very well indeed. Excellently well. She seems to regret--to require--nothing."
Margaret has quite a.s.sured herself that this little speech of hers will be acceptable to the hidden form behind the screen. She feels, indeed, quite proud of it. t.i.ta had been angry with her that last day when she had told Rylton she looked pale, but now she casts a glance at the screen, and to her horror sees that it shakes perceptibly. There is something angry in the shake of it. What is wrong now? What has she said or done?
"I am glad to hear that," says Sir Maurice, in a tone that is absolutely raging. He moves up the room, as he speaks, to the fire--a small fire, it is still a little chilly--and terribly close to the screen. Indeed, as he stoops to lift the poker and break the coals, his elbow touches the corner of it.
"Don"t stand there; come over here. So bad for your complexion!"
says Margaret frantically.
As Maurice is about as brown as he can be, this caution falls somewhat flat.
"It"s cold enough," says he absently, standing upright, with his hands behind him. He gives himself a little shake, as men do when airing themselves before a fire in mid-winter. It is quite warm to-day, but he had "seen the fire," and--we are all children of habit. "It is wonderfully cold for this time of year," continues he, even more absently than before. He lays his hand upon the corner of the screen near him. Margaret is conscious of a vague sensation of faintness. Maurice turns to her.
"You were saying that t.i.ta----"
Here Margaret rebels.
"Once for all, Maurice, I decline to discuss your wife," says she quickly. "Talk of anything else on earth you like--of Mr. Gladstone, the Irish question, poor Lord Tennyson, the mice in Hungary, _anything_--but _not_ of t.i.ta!"
"But why?" asks Rylton. "Has she forbidden you to mention her to me?"
"Certainly not! Why should she?"
"Why indeed? A man more barbarously treated by her than I have been--has seldom----"
Margaret"s unhappy eyes once more glance towards the screen. It is shaking now--ominously.
"Of course! Of course! We all know that," says she, her eyes on the screen, her mind nowhere. She has not the least idea of the words she has chosen. She had meant only to pacify him, to avert the catastrophe if possible: she had spoken timidly, enthusiastically, _fatally_. The screen now seems to quiver to its fall. An earthquake has taken possession of it, apparently--an earthquake in an extremely advanced stage.
Oh, those girls, and their promises about their fingers and their ears!
"I"m sorry I can"t ask you to stay, Maurice," says she hurriedly.
"But--but I"m not well: I, too, have a headache--a sort of neuralgia, you know."
"You seem pretty well, however," says Sir Maurice, regarding her curiously.
"Oh, I dare say," impatiently. "But I"m not. I"m ill. I tell you this sudden attack of influenza is overpowering me, and--it"s _infectious,_ my dear Maurice. It is really. They all say so--the very cleverest doctors; and I should never forgive myself if you took it--and, besides----"
"You can"t be feeling very bad," says Maurice slowly. "Your colour is all right."
"Ah! That is what is so deceptive about it," says Margaret eagerly.
"One looks well, even whilst one is almost dying. I a.s.sure you these sudden attacks of--of toothache"--wildly--"are most trying. They take so much out of one."
"They must," says Maurice gravely. "So many attacks, and all endured at the same time, would shake the const.i.tution of an annuitant.
Headache, neuralgia, influenza, toothache! You have been greatly afflicted. Are you sure you feel no symptoms of hydrophobia?"
"Maurice----"