Perhaps the closest bond of union between Julian Rossiter and his wife
now consisted in the common dismay which invaded them when Ruthie and
Ambrose Easter thought fit to inflict themselves, uninvited, upon the
Culmhayes establishment.
On the morning after Edna's return from London, she was writing in the
morning-room, when a respectfully resentful servant informed her that
Miss Ruthie and Master Ambrose were at the front door, declaring an
urgent necessity for seeing Lady Rossiter.
"Tell them I am busy writing," said Edna hastily, certainly not pausing
for the application of her favourite, "Is it kind, is it wise, is it
true?" since it was neither the first nor the last, and eventually
turned out to be far from compliant with even the second regulation,
since the visitors, accepting Horber's rebuff with deceptive quiet,
immediately made their way round to the window of the morning-room,
where they startled Lady Rossiter considerably by suddenly appearing,
with flattened noses and glaring eyeballs, against the pane.
She made imperious signs at them with an ivory penholder, without
avail. Unable to contemplate the prospect of pursuing her morning
avocations under the mouthing pantomime by which Ruthie sought to
convey her desire for immediate admission, Lady Rossiter flung open
the window, shivering at the rush of the raw morning cold.
"Good morning, children," she said forbearingly.
All Lady Rossiter's Christianity was required to induce her to accept
as even faintly probable the ultimate evolution of a Divine Spark from
the personality of Ruthie. But she always felt bound to act upon such
an assumption, if only because Sir Julian so firmly and completely
rejected it.
"I thought Horber told you I was busy, Ruthie. I can't see either of
you now, you must run home again."
"Auntie Iris is here, too," said Ruthie triumphantly.
Lady Rossiter did not relegate the value of Auntie Iris' society to
the abysmal depths of contempt to which Sir Julian had long since
uncharitably consigned it, partly because her principles never allowed
her any point of view other than one consciously superior to that of
her husband's, and partly because Auntie Iris had always been prone to
seek her advice with a certain gushing deference that was not without
its appeal. Nevertheless, she received with a very apparent absence of
elation the announcement of her young neighbour's proximity.
"Where is Auntie Iris?"
"She is with Sir Julian. He met us all in the drive."
"Did he tell you to come up to the house and find me?"
"Oh, no, we came all of ourselves. We've got such a piece of news."
Lady Rossiter was reminded of an earlier occasion, when the heralds of
Auntie Iris had thrust themselves unbidden into her presence.
"Has 'Why, Ben!' gone into a second edition?"
She had not reckoned with the proneness of a new interest to oust an
old one from youthful minds.
Ambrose and Ruthie both looked at her with the lacklustre gaze and
hanging under-jaw of utter unresponsiveness.
"I can't keep the window open any longer, it's too cold. Run back to
Auntie Iris, now."
"But we haven't told you the news."
"Quick, then."
"You must guess first," said Ruthie loudly and inexorably.
Ambrose thrust his large pale face forward and unexpectedly snatched
the dallying announcement from the lips of his sister, perhaps from a
well-grounded fear that it must otherwise be uttered from without an
abruptly-closed window.
"Auntie Iris is going to marry Mr. Garrett!"
Lady Rossiter was left no time in which to utter possible
congratulations, as the momentary advantage reft from his senior by
Ambrose was dearly paid for by him in the gale of buffetings to which
she instantly subjected him.
"Ruthie! Let go of your little brother this moment! How dare you?"
Slap!
Scream!
Bang! Slap!
"_Ruth!_ I am ashamed of you."
Lady Rossiter clung to the curtains with one strong white hand and
endeavoured to reach and to separate these makers of a hideous brawl
with the other, but was placed at a disadvantage by the extreme
probability of overbalancing herself and contributing an anti-climax to
the situation.
"I'll pay you out, Peekaboo, I will," bellowed Ruthie viciously, and
abundantly making good the threat as she uttered it.
Nor did she cease belabouring her victim until he had torn himself from
her grasp and fled back to the security of the avenue as fast as his
short legs could cover the ground.
Edna raised her person from its attitude of perilous incline.
A more unprecedented opportunity for preaching the great rule of love,
with the text, as it were, under her own window, had never yet come to
rouse that passion for propaganda which is so vital a characteristic of
those who know least of human nature.
It may definitely be assumed that Edna, gravely compelling the
representative of a younger generation into the morning-room, and
confronting her with earnest tenderness, was more bent upon delivering
herself of beautiful truths than upon ascertaining their applicability
or otherwise to the individuality of her exceedingly unpromising
convert.
"Ruthie, Ruthie, do you know that cruelty and violence are the very
worst sins that anyone can commit? To hurt somebody else is to hurt
one's own soul.... You are sinning against the greatest law in the
whole world when you behave as you did just now--the Law of Love."
Ruthie was silent, and Lady Rossiter, with a fleeting thought of what
an admirable mother she would have made, drew the child gently to her.
"Don't you know that we all contribute, by everything we do and say, to
the good and bad in the world? When you are angry, you send out black,
ugly thoughts that help to destroy all the good and beautiful harmony
that God has put into this lovely world."
Ruthie cast an enquiring glance out of the window at the bleak, grey
sky, perfectly bare borders and rather uncompromising Scotch firs which
were alone visible at the moment of this lovely world.
"When you have gentle, loving, beautiful thoughts," said Lady Rossiter
eloquently, "they send out little wordless messages into the air and
go to join the great Divine chorus of Love that is going on everywhere
without stopping. You know we are all giving out something all the
time?"
Ruthie for the first time looked faintly interested.
"Am I giving?"
"Yes, dear, that's what I'm trying to tell you about. That's why little
Ruthie must----"
"Is Daddy?"
"Certainly."
"Is Peekaboo?"
"Yes," said Lady Rossiter, beginning to wonder if a _catalogue
raisonné_ of the Easter family and its connections was to be unrolled
before her.
"Even Ambrose is not too little to----"
"Do you give?"
"I try to do so, Ruthie, certainly."
"Does Sir Julian give?"
Lady Rossiter not impossibly struggled for a moment with an unhallowed
impulse before answering:
"I hope so. But will you try to remember what I've been telling you,
Ruthie? It is not our business to think about whether other people give
out in the right way or not--never, never judge others," said Edna
parenthetically. "But I do want you to remember about Love. That it is
the biggest thing in all the world and that nothing is quite so bad and
ugly as to be angry, or unkind, or unloving. Love is what matters most,
always."
Miss Easter, _more suâ_, contrived to combine a sort of perverted
relevance with indecent vulgarity in her bored reply:
"Mr. Garrett kissed Auntie Iris this morning. Me and Peekaboo were
hiding in the cowhouse and we saw. Auntie Iris said it was love."
Lady Rossiter received in silence this singular application of the
Divine Law which she had promulgated so often and so indiscriminately
that she had long ago come to look upon it as her own production.
"What have the children been doing?" said Mark's voice at the window.
"Lady Rossiter, I'm afraid they've been worrying you dreadfully. I'm
ashamed of them."
"Come in, Mark," said Edna, not without relief. "I hope, after what
I've been saying to her, that Ruthie is going to make it up with
Ambrose at once."
Mark lifted his daughter out of the window and despatched her in
immediate search of her injured junior.
He leant against the low sill of the open window as Lady Rossiter came
towards it.
She had long ago formed the habit, which she would not have admitted
as being exceedingly agreeable to her, of taking it as her right to
advise and question Mark Easter on all personal matters connected with
his wifeless household. She belonged, indeed, to the class of those
women who have a perfectly genuine love of approaching any admittedly
_scabreux_ topics which intimately and painfully touch the life of
another--a form of prurience sometimes decorated with such titles as
"the tender touch of a good, pure woman."
"Poor little Ruthie! I've tried to talk to her a little bit. It's
motherhood that's lacking in their lives, Mark."
It might reasonably be supposed that such motherhood as the unfortunate
victim to alcohol who had partnered Mark's few, unhappy years of
matrimony had afforded to his children was as well out of their way,
but Mark made no such unsympathetic rejoinder. He gazed at Lady
Rossiter with the straight, candid look that had never held anything
but honest gratitude and admiration for Sir Julian's beautiful wife.
"They are getting older," he said disconsolately, "and they do not seem
to improve."
Mark paused, as though weighing this extremely lenient description of
his objectionable family.
"Ambrose can go to school in a year or so," said Lady Rossiter
hopefully.
"I suppose so, but the worst of it is that he really is delicate. Now,
Ruthie is as strong as a horse, but then I never did like the idea of
sending a little girl to school."
"I can't see any alternative," Edna said decidedly. "She will have to
be properly educated, and a governess, in the circumstances, is out of
the question."
"I suppose so," doubtfully answered Mark.
"It's very unlikely one could get a good daily one, down here, and a
resident one--you're a young man still, Mark, and people would talk,"
said Edna, seizing instinctively on the aspect of the question that
it would afford her the most enjoyment to discuss. Had Mark been less
than extraordinarily single-minded, it would also have afforded him the
maximum of discomfort in listening to her.
"You see, the circumstances are altogether exceptional, and make things
very hard for you, I'm afraid. You are a married man still, and there
are always dangers. Well, you know as well as I do that there are
things one can't put into words," said Edna, with no intention of being
taken _au pied de la lettre_.
"And Mark, there's another thing. Ruthie is old enough to begin asking
questions about her poor mother. What are you going to do about telling
her?"
"I don't know," Mark said simply. "I've never thought about it."
Lady Rossiter gave a sort of musical groan.
"For all one knows, servants and people may have told her already, and
it should have been so tenderly, so delicately done!"
"No, no," said Mark. "Sarah is a good creature, though she's rough; she
has always been loyalty itself."
"I'm sure she has; but after all, Mark, it is a thing which everybody
round here knows. Ruthie may hear something any day. If ever she does,
remember that you can always send her straight to me. Although it
hurts so to dwell on those sad, ugly things, I would always put all
that aside if I could help you or yours, Mark."
Edna eyed the recipient of these anticipated sacrifices with a long,
compassionate look. If a deep, secret gratification held its place in
that thoughtful gaze, Mark Easter was not likely to be any more aware
of it than was Edna herself.
"Tell me," she exclaimed, as though struck by a sudden thought, "I'm
right in thinking that everybody does know? There's no mystery, no
conspiracy of silence about it all?"
"Not that I know of," said Mark, frankly astonished. "You know, you
couldn't expect people to come up and ask me how I like it, or anything
of that sort, could you?"
Edna's gravity did not for an instant relax at the rueful extravagance
of the suggestion.
"I don't know if I ought to say this, Mark--but I think I must. One
can't let one's friends risk ship-wreck just for lack of a little moral
courage."
It might well have been supposed that any ship-wreck destined to Mark
Easter had long since passed into the realm of accomplished fact,
but it was evident that Edna had in view other and more pressing
possibilities of disaster.
"You've thought of the trouble, the wretchedness that might be entailed
on others, and the self-reproach to yourself, if there was any want of
openness about the whole miserable question?"
"But I don't think there is any want of openness," said Mark blankly.
"Mark, forgive me. You don't resent my speaking about it all? You know
I do it only because I'm so dreadfully sorry, and couldn't bear that
there should be anything further...."
"You are everything that is kind," said Mark steadily, "and you and Sir
Julian are the best friends I have in the world."
Edna could have dispensed with the inclusion of her husband's name.
It served, in fact, to stem her tide of warning, the more especially as
she felt more or less convinced that Mark was not making the intended
application of her words.
She gave smilingly graceful congratulations to the newly-betrothed
Iris, the more strongly tinged with motherliness from her consciousness
of recent success with Ruthie, and even endured a prolonged wringing
of her hand from Mr. Garrett, who had followed his new lodestar to
Culmhayes.
But that evening, after a silence more fraught with thoughtfulness even
than usual, and in consequence even more studiously ignored than usual
by Sir Julian, she said to him abruptly:
"Have you any idea whether Clarence Isbister's jilt knows the true
facts of the case about Mark?"
Few things could be more designedly insulting than Lady Rossiter's
practice of invariably alluding to Miss Marchrose in her capacity of a
wrecker of hearts. Julian, however, replied imperturbably:
"Do you mean the dipsomaniac?"
Lady Rossiter liked the term no better than her husband liked that of
"jilt," as applied to Miss Marchrose, and as she would not be guilty of
making use of it, she merely inclined her head gravely.
"Because, Julian, if that woman knows into what she is drifting, then
it will be a case of Clarence over again, and I am going to save my
poor Mark from her. And if she _doesn't_ know, I am going to tell her,
whatever it costs me to speak about it, that Mark is a married man."
X
Edna had no immediate opportunity of putting her altruistic designs
into execution. Miss Marchrose was not easily available, and Mark
Easter was reported to be less frequently at the College in consequence
of the business devolving upon him in connection with Iris' approaching
marriage.
"I don't know why Iris is in such a hurry, but they are going to be
married at the beginning of the new year," Lady Rossiter told her
husband. "Mr. Garrett is going to stay on down here."
"What an ass!"
Lady Rossiter always looked a little pained at a flippant or unkind
reference to anyone. She did so now, and replied gently:
"He is very young and first love is a very beautiful thing. He
naturally wants to stay where Iris is."
To which Sir Julian responded with an even greater intensity of
conviction in his voice than before:
"_What_ an ass!"
The chief manifestations indulged in by first love, as personified by
Miss Easter and Mr. Garrett, were perhaps not altogether unaccountable
for Sir Julian's lack of enthusiasm.
To their habitual attitude of mutual admiration they now added an
apparently inexhaustible stock of recondite jests and allusions utterly
unintelligible to anybody but themselves.
When Lady Rossiter made civil enquiry of Mr. Garrett as to the length
of time he could afford to remain away from his journalistic work in
London, he scarcely troubled to answer her, but directed a meaning look
towards Iris and said darkly:
"Ah, what would the old man say to _that_? It tallies quite oddly with
that letter we were speaking of, doesn't it?"
"Yes, indeed," said Iris obligingly. "You know what I said about
telepathy, too, Douglas."
"What?" Lady Rossiter not unnaturally wanted to know.
Iris' reply was unsatisfactory rather than informative.
"Oh, just something foolish Douglas and I had been discussing. He's
_too_ silly sometimes, you know."
"You forget our old friend McTavish," retorted Douglas, with an air of
dry repartee that would have been more effective had anyone, with the
presumable exception of Iris, been in possession of any clue as to the
identity of McTavish.
An appreciative laugh from Miss Easter rippled lightly through the
rather embarrassed silence.
"Oh, poor McTavish! You're always flourishing that creature at me!"
"Who or what is McTavish?" said Mark, in a tone which voiced the
inexplicable but growing feeling of umbrage which was invading the
minds of the assembly in regard to the unknown.
Douglas and Iris exchanged mirthful looks that seemed charged with
meaning.
"Oh, McTavish! He's a friend of Douglas--a sort of friend. I suppose
you would call him a friend, Douglas?"
"Well, hardly _my_ friend, perhaps."
"Well, perhaps hardly!"
Iris fell into transports of laughter.
"A friend of a friend of yours!" she gasped.
At this sudden introduction of a brand-new element into their exchange
of witticisms, Mr. Garrett's expression of rather satirical humour
relaxed also into unrestrained laughter.
"We Scotch lads are accused of having no sense of fun," he ejaculated,
in accents broken with mirth, "but, my certie, a real pawky bit of
Scotch humour like that makes a perfect child of me!"
It was not often that Mr. Garrett relapsed into dialect, and his
auditors were left to conclude that extreme wit and point must have
characterised the reference which had left them so entirely cold.
"Half the time I don't know what they're driving at," Mark
disconsolately told Lady Rossiter, but he added that Iris seemed to
be very happy and that Garrett was fortunately not dependent upon
his profession. That this was vaguely literary was all that could be
gathered by those not in Mr. Garrett's confidence, but he now assumed
a more than proprietary tone in discussing "Why, Ben! A Story of the
Sexes."
"I can't help thinking, Iris, that your next novel will certainly bear
an impress of greater maturity," Mr. Garrett academically observed,
"when you have entered upon the second phase of a woman's deeper
experience."
Iris looked as though she were undecided whether to blush or to look
extremely modern and detached.
She finally produced a rather unconvincingly coy flutter of the
eyelids, which committed her to nothing.
The second phase of a woman's deeper experience was to be entered
upon in the beginning of January, and Iris spent a great deal of her
time in going backwards and forwards between London and Devonshire.
She had developed an enthusiasm for Miss Marchrose, and refused to
give up her course of typewriting lessons at the College, where her
presence produced the slight stirring of interest always provoked by a
bride-elect.
Even Lady Rossiter, although her opinion of Miss Easter's conquest was
far from being an exalted one, displayed a certain deference to the
interesting situation by driving her into Culmouth and talking all
the way, in a very candid and enlightening manner, of the sacrifices
entailed by matrimony.
At the College, Lady Rossiter, as though struck by a sudden thought,
said that she would come upstairs with Iris and seek the Lady
Superintendent.
"A very little gratifies them, and I always like to keep in close touch
with the staff. I must arrange for one of my little Sunday tea-parties
next week, and you must come and help me entertain them all, Iris."
The social status, _ipso facto_, conferred upon the wearer of an
engagement- or a wedding-ring, by whomsoever bestowed, is curiously
typical of the point of view of certain feminine minds. It might
be doubted whether Miss Iris Easter, unattached, would have been
considered in any way competent to help the chatelaine of Culmhayes in
her entertainments.
Iris, however, was never lacking in responsiveness.
"I shall adore that, dear Lady Rossiter. I think Miss Marchrose is
simply too sweet for words, you know, and Mark admires her awfully."
Lady Rossiter was only too well aware of it, but the observation served
to strengthen the decision that she had already taken.
"This is my last lesson," Iris said sentimentally, as they went up the
stone stairs. "I shall be able to help Douglas, of course, so much
more, now that I can really type. Oh, Mr. Cooper, good morning!"
The young man returned cheerful greetings. "You'll find Miss Marchrose
in the High Speed, if you're looking for her. I'm on my way downstairs."
"I have not been in to any of the classrooms for a long while," Lady
Rossiter said graciously. "What is happening in the High Speed?"
"A test, I believe, Lady Rossiter. Perhaps you would care to come in
and have a look. A stimulus," said Cooper, with great gallantry, "is
always desirable. I will escort you if I may. I'm afraid I always go
upstairs two steps at a time. Sometimes three."
The High Speed room was fairly well occupied. Half a dozen young girls,
between the ages of fifteen and twenty, a couple of middle-aged women,
a precocious-looking little boy with eyes that seemed ready to pop out
of his head, and several half-grown youths, sat at the wooden desks.
Miss Marchrose stood at the top of the room, book in hand, and turned
as Cooper opened the door.
It was an understood thing that the wife of the principal director had
the right of entry throughout the College precincts and Miss Marchrose,
whatever her feelings, had no alternative but to direct the disposal of
chairs next to her own rostrum.
"You mustn't be nervous," Lady Rossiter said to her smilingly, in an
undertone that might have answered its purpose better but for the
absolute silence pervading the room. "I've heard these tests given
before, and I always think it's nervous work for the reader. I know
I should be in terror myself of coming across quite unpronounceable
words. But you probably know the book. What is it?"
Miss Marchrose showed her the text-book in silence, and Lady Rossiter,
though she smiled and nodded at it, did no more than glance at the
covers.
"This is the speed test," Miss Marchrose announced clearly. "Are you
ready?"
Nobody answered, but the tension in the room was obvious, and the
little boy in front squared his shoulders, bending his head forward
until it almost touched his note-book, and grasping a short pencil in a
stubby hand of which each fingernail was quite neatly and symmetrically
outlined in black.
"In the United Kingdom there are over 500 railway companies, the lines
of which ... are worked or leased by about forty of the principal
companies.... It was in the first half of the nineteenth century
that the majority of the great undertakings received parliamentary
sanction...."
Miss Marchrose's voice was quite level and her enunciation distinct.
She varied neither her intonation nor the rate at which she read from
the printed page before her, already carefully subdivided into phrases.
Most of the shorthand-writers seemed able to take down the test--a
shade behind the reader, however, so that their pencils were never
altogether off the paper. The youths in the back of the room displayed
greater facility, sometimes able to pause with the end of a sentence
and relax an aching right hand. Only the little boy dashed down his
dots and outlines as the words left Miss Marchrose's lips, and sat
with pencil impudently poised in the air during the regulated pause
separating each phrase. Both the elder women in the class, who might
have been of the less superior type of hotel-clerk or assistant
manageress, came to early grief.
One of them laid her pencil down outright after the first
five-and-twenty words, shaking her head, and looking resentfully at
the aggressively proficient child in front of her; and the other one,
though scribbling frantically, her pencil almost piercing the paper,
with a painfully flushed face and a hand that shook from strain,
was quite evidently unable to keep up with the dictation, and was,
moreover, scribbling down a large proportion of the words in almost
illegible longhand.
Iris Easter watched the class with very evident interest and amusement,
and smiled at the precocious little boy until she had extorted from him
in return a significantly triumphant grin.
Lady Rossiter also looked at the class with that gravely observant gaze
that, more often than not, denotes complete absorption in something
quite else, and thought about Miss Marchrose.
She also glanced at her once or twice, as she stood facing the room,
very erect, with her eyes on the book, and with no trace of shyness or
nervousness in her bearing.
Edna, whose very decided beauty was of the type that seldom or never
varies, could on this occasion look at Miss Marchrose with complete
satisfaction, and even ask herself whether that woman could possibly
be a day under thirty-five. Neither the strong sunlight of a frosty
January morning nor the contrast with Iris Easter showed her to
advantage.
Her voice stopped.
There was a general, inarticulate sound of relief throughout the room.
"When you have transcribed the test into longhand," said Miss Marchrose
serenely, "please give your papers in at the desk, Classroom I, and for
the benefit of those who have not done a speed test before I may add
that the students must not assist one another in the transcriptions."
The class gathered up note-books and pencils and left the room, with
much scraping of benches and shuffling of feet.
"Oh, Miss Marchrose, I do think you're clever," was the remark made by
Iris, rather unnecessarily, to Lady Rossiter's way of thinking.
"Will they all pass that awful test?"
"Oh, no; 'getting it back,' as they call it, is the part they seem
to find most difficult. Some of the less intelligent ones seem to
have absolutely no sense of the meaning of words. If the shorthand
outline isn't clear, they guess at the word and put in almost anything,
whether it makes sense or not. Of course, that's where the majority of
stenographers do fail."
"But if they make those little scrabbles clearly enough, then it's all
right?" said Miss Easter.
"Yes, that's where the younger ones score. The children nearly always
learn much faster than the older ones and make the outlines more
clearly, and then they can transcribe easily enough, whether they
understand the meaning of what they've taken down or not."
"Oh, that awful little boy with the eyes!"
"He'll pass," said Miss Marchrose, laughing. "He's a dreadful child."
"Iris, dear," said Lady Rossiter softly, "when do you have your lesson?"
Thus obliquely recalled to the immediate duties of her state of life,
Miss Marchrose conducted her pupil to a small classroom where the
Remington machine awaited her, and in front of which Iris took her
seat with obvious and immense satisfaction in the flashing of her
engagement-ring as her small hands moved backward and forward on the
keyboard.
"If you don't have to stay with her while she's practising, I should
like to have a look at your own office," said Lady Rossiter very
sweetly. "I so often wonder if you don't find it cold in this weather."
"It is very cold indeed, but as I keep the window wide open, that's my
own fault," Miss Marchrose answered brusquely.
But she led the way into her room and prepared to shut the window,
which was, as she had said, wide open.
"Oh, but don't! There can never be too much of God's own fresh air
to please me," Lady Rossiter exclaimed, at the same time fastening
the high collar of her fur coat. "Besides, I know you get so little
out-of-doors you must want all the sunshine possible. Tell me, do you
like your work here?"
"Yes."
"That's rather wonderful of you. Mr. Easter, our agent, you know,
and also my very dear friend, tells me that you work so well and
conscientiously. I am sure you like working for Mr. Easter: everyone
does."
"Yes."
"I'm so very, very glad about dear little Iris and this engagement.
Quite suited to each other in every sort of way. After all, deep can
only call to deep in very exceptional cases, and they are both so young
and happy. Besides, it will be a great weight off her brother's mind."
Miss Marchrose did not even return her former unbrilliant monosyllable,
and Lady Rossiter was obliged to persevere.
"There had been so much sadness already, there--of course, he never
talks of it, except to me sometimes--but one has to tread, oh so
lightly and delicately! It is all past now, as far as such things can
be past when there are constant grievous reminders, but he and I went
through it all side by side at the time--shoulder to shoulder."
Edna paused, and looked rather resentfully at her unresponsive auditor.
Evidently the warning of which she stood in such need was to be
delivered without any assistance from herself.
She looked full at the Lady Superintendent, who gazed back at her with
calm hostility in her eyes.
"You know that Mark Easter is a married man?" Lady Rossiter said
slowly and very distinctly, as though determined, which indeed she
was, that the fact should be made clear beyond the possibility of
misunderstanding. "His wife, unfortunate woman--God forbid that I
should condemn her!--is in a home for inebriates. But she is still
alive, and may live for years."
Silence ensued, and Lady Rossiter considerately averted her eyes. She
wondered for a moment whether she should lay her hand upon the other's
shoulder with a silent pressure of sympathy, but decided that to do so
would be a tacit assumption of facts better unrecognised.
Then, for she was of acute perceptions, she became subtly aware that
disturbance was in the air.
Miss Marchrose had whitened quite perceptibly, and then Lady Rossiter
received the odd impression that some weapon of vengeance had been
seized upon by her, suspended for an instant, and tacitly rejected as
unworthy.
The impression was instantly intensified when Miss Marchrose spoke at
last, although she merely said, "I have to speak to Mr. Fuller. Forgive
me if I use the telephone for one moment."
Hastily and unwisely, Edna tested her own sudden suspicion.
"Did you know Mark Easter's story already?"
Miss Marchrose looked down as though from an infinite height, her
mobile face purposely supercilious.
"Oh, yes," said she, her voice full of deliberate scorn.
Edna did not ask from whence the information had emanated, since she
was suddenly aware, with all the certainty of intuition, that Miss
Marchrose had undoubtedly derived her knowledge of Mark Easter's
affairs direct from himself.