"But I haven"t the remotest intention of being a barrister. How did you get hold of that notion?"
"Oh, I knew it all along. Papa said so."
"You must have been mistaken."
"Not a bit. I"ll tell you exactly what he said. I heard him talking about it to mother in the library. I wasn"t listening, you know. I--I heard your name, and I couldn"t help it. He said he expected to see you figuring in the law courts some of these days--Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division."
Tyson rose, putting her down from his knee as if she had been a baby.
"I hope you didn"t tell Miss Batchelor that?"
"Yes, I did though--rather!"
He smiled in spite of himself. "What did she do?"
"Oh, she just stared--over her shoulder; you know her way."
"Look here, Molly, you must _not_ go about saying that sort of thing.
People here don"t understand it; they"ll only think--"
"What?"
"Never mind what they"ll think. The world is chock-full of wickedness, my child. But if half the people we meet are sinners, the other half are fools. I never knew any one yet who wasn"t one or the other. So don"t think about what they think, but mind what you say. See?"
"I"m sorry." She had come softly up to the window where he stood; and now she was rubbing his sleeve with one side of her face and smiling with the other.
He stroked her hair.
"All right. Don"t do it again, that"s all."
"I won"t--if you"ll only tell me one thing. Were you ever engaged to anybody but me?"
"No; I was never engaged to anybody but you."
"Then you were never in love with ten gentlemen at once like the Countess Pol--"
His answer was cut short by the entrance of Sir Peter Morley, followed by Captain Stanistreet.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST STONE
Tyson was much flattered by the rumor that Sir Peter Morley had p.r.o.nounced his wife to be "the loveliest woman in Leicestershire"; for Lady Morley herself was a sufficiently splendid type, with her austere Puritan beauty. As for the rector, it was considered that his admiration of Mrs. Nevill Tyson somewhat stultified his utterances in the pulpit.
It is not always well for a woman when the judgment of the other s.e.x reverses that of her own. It was not well for Mrs. Nevill Tyson to be told that she had fascinated Sir Peter Morley and spoiled the rector"s sermons; it was not well for her to be worshipped (collectively) by the riff-raff that swarmed about Thorneytoft at Tyson"s invitation; but any of these things were better than for her to be left, as she frequently was, to the unmixed society of Captain Stanistreet. He had a reputation.
Tyson thought nothing of going up to town for the week-end and leaving Louis to entertain his wife in his absence. To do him justice, this neglect was at first merely a device by which he heightened the luxury of possession. In his own choice phrase, he "liked to give a mare a loose rein when he knew her paces." It was all right. He knew Molly, and if he did not, Stanistreet knew him. But these things were subtleties which Drayton Parva did not understand, and naturally enough it began to avoid the Tysons because of them.
Apparently Mrs. Nevill Tyson liked Stanistreet. She liked his humorous dark face and his courteous manners; above all, she liked that air of profound interest with which he listened to everything that she had to say; it made it easy for her to chatter to him as she chattered to n.o.body else, except (presumably) her husband. As for Stanistreet, try as he would (and he tried a great deal), he could not make Mrs. Nevill Tyson out. Day after day Mrs. Nevill Tyson, in amazing garments, sat and prattled to him in the dog-cart, while Tyson followed the hounds; yet for the life of him he could not tell whether she was really very infantile or only very deep. You see she was Tyson"s wife. It must be said she gave him every opportunity for clearing his ideas on the subject, and if he did not know, other people might be allowed to make mistakes. And when he came to stay at Thorneytoft for weeks at a time, familiarity with the little creature"s moods only complicated the problem.
It was about the middle of February, and Stanistreet had been down for a fortnight"s hunting, when, in the morning of his last day, Tyson announced his intention of going up to town with him to-morrow. He might be away for three weeks or a month altogether; it depended upon whether he enjoyed himself sufficiently.
Stanistreet, who was looking at Mrs. Nevill Tyson at the time, saw the smile and the color die out of her face; her beauty seemed to suffer a shade, a momentary eclipse. She began to drink tea (they were at breakfast) with an air of abstraction too precipitate to be quite convincing.
"Moll," said Tyson, "if you"re going to this meet, you"d better run upstairs and put your things on."
"I don"t want to go to any meets."
"Why not?"
"Because--I--I don"t like to see other women riding."
"Bless her little heart!" (Tyson was particularly affectionate this morning) "she"s never had a bridle in her ridiculous hands, and she talks about "other women riding.""
"Because I want to ride, and you won"t let me, and I"m jealous."
"Well, if you mayn"t ride with me, you may drive with Stanistreet."
"_I_ may drive Captain Stanistreet?"
"Certainly not; Captain Stanistreet may drive you."
"We"ll see about that," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson as she left the room.
She soon reappeared, enchantingly pretty again in her laces and furs.
It was a glorious morning, the first thin white frost after a long thaw.
The meet was in front of the Cross-Roads Inn, about a mile out of Drayton Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked that Mrs.
Nevill Tyson looked uncommonly happy in the dog-cart; while Tyson spoke to n.o.body and n.o.body spoke to him. Poor devil! he hadn"t at all a pretty look on that queer bleached face of his. And all the time he kept twisting his horse"s head round in a melancholy sort of way, and backing into things and out of them, fit to make you swear.
She must have noticed something. They were trotting along, Stanistreet driving, by a road that ran side by side with the fields scoured by the hunt, and Tyson could always be seen going recklessly and alone. He could ride, he could ride! His worst enemy never doubted that.
"It"s very odd," said she, "but the people here don"t seem to like Nevill one bit. I suppose they"ve never seen anything quite like him before."
"I very much doubt if they have."
"_I_ think they"re afraid of him. Mother is, I know; she blinks when she talks to him."
"Does she blink when she talks to me?"
"Of course not--you"re different."
"I am not her son-in-law, certainly."
"Do you know, though he"s so much older than me--I simply shudder when I think he"s thirty-seven--and so awfully clever, and _so_ bad-tempered, I"m not in the least afraid of him. And he really has a shocking bad temper."