He could not sell or borrow money on what had been given. Apparently the place had been re-established on a footing such as it had not rested upon during his own generation, or his father"s. As he loathed life in the country, it was not he who would enjoy its luxury, but his wife and her child. The second point was that these people--this girl--had somehow had the sharpness to put themselves in the right, and to place him in a position at which he could not complain without putting himself in the wrong. Public opinion would say that benefits had been heaped upon him, that the correct thing had been done correctly with the knowledge and approval of the legal advisers of his family. It had been a masterly thing, that visit to Townlinson & Sheppard. He was obliged to aid his self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sort of girl, this Betty, whose childhood he had loathed, and, to his jaded taste, novelty appealed enormously. Her attraction for him was also added to by the fact that he was not at all sure that there was not combined with it a pungent spice of the old detestation. He was repelled as well as allured. She represented things which he hated. First, the mere material power, which no man can bully, whatsoever his humour. It was the power he most longed for and, as he could not hope to possess it, most sneered at and raged against. Also, as she talked, it was plain that her habit of self-control and her sense of resource would be difficult to deal with. He was a survival of the type of man whose simple creed was that women should not possess resources, as when they possessed them they could rarely be made to behave themselves.
But while he thought these things, he walked by her side and both listened and talked smiling the agreeable smile.
"You will pardon my dull bewilderment," he said. "It is not unnatural, is it--in a mere outsider?"
And Betty, with the beautiful impersonal smile, said:
"We felt it so unfortunate that even your solicitors did not know your address."
When, at length, they turned and strolled towards the house, a carriage was drawing up before the door, and at the sight of it, Betty saw her companion slightly lift his eyebrows. Lady Anstruthers had been out and was returning. The groom got down from the box, and two men-servants appeared upon the steps. Lady Anstruthers descended, laughing a little as she talked to Ughtred, who had been with her. She was dressed in clear, pale grey, and the soft rose lining of her parasol warmed the colour of her skin.
Sir Nigel paused a second and put up his gla.s.s.
"Is that my wife?" he said. "Really! She quite recalls New York."
The agreeable smile was on his lips as he hastened forward. He always more or less enjoyed coming upon Rosalie suddenly. The obvious result was a pleasing tribute to his power.
Betty, following him, saw what occurred.
Ughtred saw him first, and spoke quick and low.
"Mother!" he said.
The tone of his voice was evidently enough. Lady Anstruthers turned with an unmistakable start. The rose lining of her parasol ceased to warm her colour. In fact, the parasol itself stepped aside, and she stood with a blank, stiff, white face.
"My dear Rosalie," said Sir Nigel, going towards her. "You don"t look very glad to see me."
He bent and kissed her quite with the air of a devoted husband. Knowing what the caress meant, and seeing Rosy"s face as she submitted to it, Betty felt rather cold. After the conjugal greeting he turned to Ughtred.
"You look remarkably well," he said.
Betty came forward.
"We met in the park, Rosy," she explained. "We have been talking to each other for half an hour."
The atmosphere which had surrounded her during the last three months had done much for Lady Anstruthers" nerves. She had the power to recover herself. Sir Nigel himself saw this when she spoke.
"I was startled because I was not expecting to see you," she said. "I thought you were still on the Riviera. I hope you had a pleasant journey home."
"I had an extraordinarily pleasant surprise in finding your sister here," he answered. And they went into the house.
In descending the staircase on his way to the drawing-room before dinner, Sir Nigel glanced about him with interested curiosity. If the village had been put in order, something more had been done here.
Remembering the worn rugs and the bald-headed tiger, he lifted his brows. To leave one"s house in a state of resigned dilapidation and return to find it filled with all such things as comfort combined with excellent taste might demand, was an enlivening experience--or would have been so under some circ.u.mstances. As matters stood, perhaps, he might have felt better pleased if things had been less well done. But they were very well done. They had managed to put themselves in the right in this also. The rich sobriety of colour and form left no opening for supercilious comment--which was a neat weapon it was annoying to be robbed of.
The drawing-room was fresh, brightly charming, and full of flowers.
Betty was standing before an open window with her sister. His wife"s shoulders, he observed at once, had absolutely begun to suggest contours. At all events, her bones no longer stuck out. But one did not look at one"s wife"s shoulders when one could turn from them to a fairness of velvet and ivory. "You know," he said, approaching them, "I find all this very amazing. I have been looking out of my window on to the gardens."
"It is Betty who has done it all," said Rosy.
"I did not suspect you of doing it, my dear Rosalie," smiling. "When I saw Betty standing in the avenue, I knew at once that it was she who had mended the chimney-pots in the village and rehung the gates."
For the present, at least, it was evident that he meant to be sufficiently amiable. At the dinner table he was conversational and asked many questions, professing a natural interest in what had been done. It was not difficult to talk to a girl whose eyes and shoulders combined themselves with a quick wit and a power to attract which he reluctantly owned he had never seen equalled. His reluctance arose from the fact that such a power complicated matters. He must be on the defensive until he knew what she was going to do, what he must do himself, and what results were probable or possible. He had spent his life in intrigue of one order or another. He enjoyed outwitting people and rather preferred to attain an end by devious paths. He began every acquaintance on the defensive. His argument was that you never knew how things would turn out, consequently, it was as well to conduct one"s self at the outset with the discreet forethought of a man in the presence of an enemy. He did not know how things would turn out in Betty"s case, and it was a little confusing to find one"s self watching her with a sense of excitement. He would have preferred to be cool--to be cold--and he realised that he could not keep his eyes off her.
"I remember, with regret," he said to her later in the evening, "that when you were a child we were enemies."
"I am afraid we were," was Betty"s impartial answer.
"I am sure it was my fault," he said. "Pray forget it. Since you have accomplished such wonders, will you not, in the morning, take me about the place and explain to me how it has been done?"
When Betty went to her room she dismissed her maid as soon as possible, and sat for some time alone and waiting. She had had no opportunity to speak to Rosy in private, and she was sure she would come to her. In the course of half an hour she heard a knock at the door.
Yes, it was Rosy, and her newly-born colour had fled and left her looking dragged again. She came forward and dropped into a low chair near Betty, letting her face fall into her hands.
"I"m very sorry, Betty," she half whispered, "but it is no use."
"What is no use?" Betty asked.
"Nothing is any use. All these years have made me such a coward. I suppose I always was a coward, but in the old days there never was anything to be afraid of."
"What are you most afraid of now?"
"I don"t know. That is the worst. I am afraid of HIM--just of himself--of the look in his eyes--of what he may be planning quietly. My strength dies away when he comes near me."
"What has he said to you?" she asked.
"He came into my dressing-room and sat and talked. He looked about from one thing to another and pretended to admire it all and congratulated me. But though he did not sneer at what he saw, his eyes were sneering at me. He talked about you. He said that you were a very clever woman. I don"t know how he manages to imply that a very clever woman is something cunning and debased--but it means that when he says it. It seems to insinuate things which make one grow hot all over."
She put out a hand and caught one of Betty"s.
"Betty, Betty," she implored. "Don"t make him angry. Don"t."
"I am not going to begin by making him angry," Betty said. "And I do not think he will try to make me angry--at first."
"No, he will not," cried Rosalie. "And--and you remember what I told you when first we talked about him?"
"And do you remember," was Betty"s answer, "what I said to you when I first met you in the park? If we were to cable to New York this moment, we could receive an answer in a few hours."
"He would not let us do it," said Rosy. "He would stop us in some way--as he stopped my letters to mother--as he stopped me when I tried to run away. Oh, Betty, I know him and you do not."
"I shall know him better every day. That is what I must do. I must learn to know him. He said something more to you than you have told me, Rosy.
What was it?"
"He waited until Detcham left me," Lady Anstruthers confessed, more than half reluctantly. "And then he got up to go away, and stood with his hands resting on the chairback, and spoke to me in a low, queer voice.
He said, "Don"t try to play any tricks on me, my good girl--and don"t let your sister try to play any. You would both have reason to regret it.""
She was a half-hypnotised thing, and Betty, watching her with curious but tender eyes, recognised the abnormality.
"Ah, if I am a clever woman," she said, "he is a clever man. He is beginning to see that his power is slipping away. That was what G.