“If only the poet hadn’t had money, too!” Mrs. Delafield had thought.
For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would
never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of
another as good.
Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than
Niel’s behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take
Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her
act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see
Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to
her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her
nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had
implored her to go to her aunt. “I told her that you would receive her,
Isabel,” so Tim’s letter ended; “and I trust you now to save us--as far
as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I
forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your
appeal.”
Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. “Forgive.” Would “receive” her.
The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and
shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and
spinning in Rhoda’s world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in
seeming rather than in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda
came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions
thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda’s world repartee
and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might
find herself, as a result of _le beau geste_, less favourably placed for
the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course,
was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on
what she would say to her,--as she determined that Rhoda should not
leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,--the sound of
wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the
station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming
Jane Amoret and her nurse.