I have said that I did many things on this wonderful day, but perhaps
the simplest way to describe the rest of them is as a sustained attempt
to avert that disaster. I succeeded, by vigilance, in preventing my late
companion from carrying Mrs. Server off: I had no wish to see her
studied--by anyone but myself at least--in the light of my theory. I
felt by this time that I understood my theory, but I was not obliged to
believe that Mrs. Brissenden did. I am afraid I must frankly confess
that I called deception to my aid; to separate the two ladies I gave the
more initiated a look in which I invited her to read volumes. This look,
or rather the look she returned, comes back to me as the first note of a
tolerably tight, tense little drama, a little drama of which our
remaining hours at Newmarch were the all too ample stage. She understood
me, as I meant, that she had better leave me to get at the truth--owing
me some obligation, as she did, for so much of it as I had already
communicated. This step was of course a tacit pledge that she should
have the rest from me later on. I knew of some pictures in one of the
rooms that had not been lighted the previous evening, and I made these
my pretext for the effect I desired. I asked Mrs. Server if she wouldn't
come and see them with me, admitting at the same time that I could
scarce expect her to forgive me for my share in the invasion of the
quiet corner in which poor Briss had evidently managed so to interest
her.
"Oh, yes," she replied as we went our way, "he _had_ managed to interest
me. Isn't he curiously interesting? But I hadn't," she continued on my
being too struck with her question for an immediate answer--"I hadn't
managed to interest _him_. Of course you know why!" she laughed. "No one
interests him but Lady John, and he could think of nothing, while I kept
him there, but of how soon he could return to her."
These remarks--of which I give rather the sense than the form, for they
were a little scattered and troubled, and I helped them out and pieced
them together--these remarks had for me, I was to find, unexpected
suggestions, not all of which was I prepared on the spot to take up.
"And is Lady John interested in our friend?"
"Not, I suppose, given her situation, so much as he would perhaps
desire. You don't know what her situation _is_?" she went on while I
doubtless appeared to be sunk in innocence. "Isn't it rather marked that
there's only one person she's interested in?"
"One person?" I was thoroughly at sea.
But we had reached with it the great pictured saloon with which I had
proposed to assist her to renew acquaintance and in which two visitors
had anticipated us. "Why, here he is!" she exclaimed as we paused, for
admiration, in the doorway. The high frescoed ceiling arched over a
floor so highly polished that it seemed to reflect the faded pastels
set, in rococo borders, in the walls and constituting the distinction of
the place. Our companions, examining together one of the portraits and
turning their backs, were at the opposite end, and one of them was
Gilbert Long.