London was in full season. But it was a cold May, and both the town and
its inhabitants wore a gray and pinched aspect. Under the east wind an
unsavory dust blew along Piccadilly; the ladies were still in furs; the
trees were venturing out reluctantly, showing many a young leaf bitten
by night frosts; the Park had but a scanty crowd; and the drapers,
oppressed with summer goods, saw their muslins and gauzes in the windows
give up their freshness for naught.
Nevertheless, the ferment of political and social life had seldom been
greater. A Royal wedding in the near future was supposed to account for
the vigor of London's social pulse; the streets, indeed, were already
putting up poles and decorations. And a general election, expected in
the autumn, if not before, accounted for the vivacity of the clubs, the
heat of the newspapers, and the energy of the House of Commons, where
all-night sittings were lightly risked by the Government and recklessly
challenged by the Opposition. Everybody was playing to the
gallery--_i.e._, the country. Old members were wooing their
constituencies afresh; young candidates were spending feverish energies
on new hazards, and anxiously inquiring at what particular date in the
campaign tea-parties became unlawful. Great issues were at stake; for
old parties were breaking up under the pressure of new interests and
passions; within the Liberal party the bubbling of new faiths was at
its crudest and hottest; and those who stood by the slow and safe
ripening of Freedom, from "precedent to precedent," were in much anxiety
as to what shape or shapes might ultimately emerge from a brew so strong
and heady. Which only means that now, as always, Whigs and Radicals were
at odds; and the "unauthorized programme" of the day was sending its
fiery cross through the towns and the industrial districts of the north.
A debate of some importance was going on in the House of Commons. The
Tory Government had brought in a Land Bill, intended, no doubt, rather
as bait for electors than practical politics. It was timid and
ill-drafted, and the Opposition, in days when there were still some
chances in debate, joyously meant to kill it, either by frontal attack
or by obstruction. But, in the opinion of the Left Wing of the party,
the chief weapon of its killing should be the promise of a much larger
and more revolutionary measure from the Liberal side. The powerful Right
Wing, however, largely represented on the front bench, held that you
could no more make farmers than saints by Act of Parliament, and that
only by slow and indirect methods could the people be drawn back to the
land. There was, in fact, little difference between them and the front
bench opposite, except a difference in method; only the Whig brains were
the keener; and in John Ferrier the Right Wing had a personality and an
oratorical gift which the whole Tory party admired and envied.
There had been a party meeting on the subject of the Bill, and Ferrier
and the front bench had, on the whole, carried the indorsement of their
policy. But there was an active and discontented minority, full of
rebellious projects for the general election.
On this particular afternoon Ferrier had been dealing with the
Government Bill on the lines laid down by the meeting at Grenville
House. His large pale face (the face of a student rather than a
politician), with its small eyes and overhanging brows; the straight
hair and massive head; the heavy figure closely buttoned in the familiar
frock-coat; the gesture easy, animated, still young--on these well-known
aspects a crowded House had bent its undivided attention. Then Ferrier
sat down; a bore rose; and out flowed the escaping tide to the lobbies
and the Terrace.
Marsham found himself on the Terrace, among a group of malcontents:
Barton, grim and unkempt, prophet-eyes blazing, mouth contemptuous; the
Scotchman McEwart, who had been one of the New Year's visitors to
Tallyn, tall, wiry, red-haired, the embodiment of all things shrewd and
efficient; and two or three more. A young London member was holding
forth, masking what was really a passion of disgust in a slangy
nonchalance.
"What's the good of turning these fellows out--will anybody tell me?--if
that's all Ferrier can do for us? Think I prefer 'em to that kind of
mush! As for Barton, I've had to hold him down by the coat-tails!"
Barton allowed the slightest glint of a smile to show itself for an
instant. The speaker--Roland Lankester--was one of his few weaknesses.
But the frown returned. He strolled along with his hands in his pockets
and his eyes on the ground; his silence was the silence of one in whom
the fire was hot.
"Most disappointing--all through!" said McEwart, with emphasis. "The
facts wrongly chosen--the argument absurd. It'll take all the heart out
of our fellows in the country."
Marsham looked up.
"Well, it isn't for want of pressure. Ferrier's life hasn't been worth
living this last month."
The tone was ambiguous. It fitted either with defence or indictment.
The London member--Roland Lankester, who was a friend of Marion Vincent,
and of Frobisher, represented an East End constituency, and lived
there--looked at the speaker with a laugh. "That's perfectly true. What
have we all been doing but 'gingering' Ferrier for the last six months?
And here's the result! No earthly good in wearing one's self to
fiddle-strings over this election! I shall go and keep pigs in Canada!"
The group strolled along the Terrace, leaving behind them an animated
crowd, all busy with the same subject. In the middle of it they passed
Ferrier himself--flushed--with the puffy eyes of a man who never gets
more than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless,
smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him. The wind blew
chill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies who
were being entertained at tea drew their furs about them, shivering.
"He'll _have_ to go to the Lords!--that's flat--if we win this election.
If we come back, the new members will never stand him; and if we
don't--well, I suppose, in that case, he does as well as anybody else."
The remarks were McEwart's. Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him.
"Don't you be unjust, my boy. Ferrier's one of the smartest
Parliamentary hands England has ever turned out"
At this Barton roused.
"What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong
Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The
Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run _straight!_--as
the party wants him to run."
"All right. _Ad leones!_ Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only I
don't know what Marsham will say to it."
Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish
angle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east
wind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect:
broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for poverty
and the poor. But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts and
conditions of men, together with certain spiritual gifts, made him
friends in all camps. Bishops consulted him, the Socialists claimed him;
perhaps it was the East End children who possessed him most wholly.
Nevertheless, there was a fierce strain in him; he could be a fanatic,
even a hard fanatic, on occasion.
Marsham did not show much readiness to take up the reference to himself.
As he walked beside the others, his slender elegance, his handsome head,
and fashionable clothes marked him out from the rugged force of Barton,
the middle-class alertness of McEwart, the rubbed apostolicity of
Lankester. But the face was fretful and worried.
"Ferrier has not the smallest intention of going to the Lords!" he said,
at last--not without a touch of impatience.
"That's the party's affair."
"The party owes him a deal too much to insist upon anything against his
will."
"Does it!--_does_ it!" said Lankester. "Ferrier always reminds me of a
cat we possessed at home, who brought forth many kittens. She loved them
dearly, and licked them all over--tenderly--all day. But by the end of
the second day they were always dead. Somehow she had killed them all.
That's what Ferrier does with all our little Radical measures--loves 'em
all--and kills 'em all."
McEwart flushed.
"Well, it's no good talking," he said, doggedly; "we've done enough of
that! There will be a meeting of the Forward Club next week, and we
shall decide on our line of action."
"Broadstone will never throw him over." Lankester threw another glance
at Marsham. "You'll only waste your breath."
Lord Broadstone was the veteran leader of the party, who in the event of
victory at the polls would undoubtedly be Prime Minister.
"He can take Foreign Affairs, and go to the Lords in a blaze of glory,"
said McEwart. "But he's _impossible!_--as leader in the Commons. The
party wants grit--not dialectic."
Marsham still said nothing. The others fell to discussing the situation
in much detail, gradually elaborating what were, in truth, the first
outlines of a serious campaign against Ferrier's leadership. Marsham
listened, but took no active part in it. It was plain, however, that
none of the group felt himself in any way checked by Marsham's presence
or silence.
Presently Marsham--the debate in the House having fallen to levels of
dulness "measureless to man"--remembered that his mother had expressed a
wish that he might come home to dinner. He left the House, lengthening
his walk for exercise, by way of Whitehall and Piccadilly. His
expression was still worried and preoccupied. Mechanically he stopped to
look into a picture-dealer's shop, still open, somewhere about the
middle of Piccadilly. A picture he saw there made him start. It was a
drawing of the chestnut woods of Vallombrosa, in the first flush and
glitter of spring, with a corner of one of the monastic buildings, now
used as a hotel.
_She_ was there. At an official crush the night before he had heard
Chide say to Lady Niton that Miss Mallory had written to him from
Vallombrosa, and was hoping to stay there till the end of June. So that
she was sitting, walking, reading, among those woods. In what
mood?--with what courage? In any case, she was alone; fighting her grief
alone; looking forward to the future alone. Except, of course, for Mrs.
Colwood--nice, devoted little thing!
He moved on, consumed with regrets and discomfort. During the two months
which had elapsed since Diana had left England, he had, in his own
opinion, gone through a good deal. He was pursued by the memory of that
wretched afternoon when he had debated with himself whether he should
not, after all, go and intercept her at Charing Cross, plead his
mother's age and frail health, implore her to give him time; not to
break off all relations; to revert, at least, to the old friendship. He
had actually risen from his seat in the House of Commons half an hour
before the starting of the train; had made his way to the Central Lobby,
torn by indecision; and had there been pounced upon by an important and
fussy constituent. Of course, he could have shaken the man off. But just
the extra resolution required to do it had seemed absolutely beyond his
power, and when next he looked at the clock it was too late. He went
back to the House, haunted by the imagination of a face. She would never
have mentioned her route unless she had meant "Come and say
good-bye!"--unless she had longed for a parting look and word. And
he--coward that he was--had shirked it--had denied her last
mute petition.
Well!--after all--might it not simply have made matters worse?--for her
no less than for him? The whole thing was his mother's responsibility.
He might, no doubt, have pushed it all through, regardless of
consequences; he might have accepted the Juliet Sparling heritage,
thrown over his career, braved his mother, and carried off Diana by
storm--if, that is, she would ever have allowed him to make the
sacrifice as soon as she fully understood it. But it would have been one
of the most quixotic things ever done. He had made his effort to do it;
and--frankly--he had not been capable of it. He wondered how many men of
his acquaintance would have been capable of it.
Nevertheless, he had fallen seriously in his own estimation. Nor was he
unaware that he had lost a certain amount of consideration with the
world at large. His courtship of Diana had been watched by a great many
people: and at the same moment that it came to an end and she left
England, the story of her parentage had become known in Brookshire.
There had been a remarkable outburst of public sympathy and pity,
testifying, no doubt, in a striking way, to the effect produced by the
girl's personality, even in those few months of residence. And the fact
that she was not there, that only the empty house that she had furnished
with so much girlish pleasure remained to bear its mute testimony to her
grief, made feeling all the hotter. Brookshire beheld her as a charming
and innocent victim, and, not being able to tell her so, found relief in
blaming and mocking at the man who had not stood by her. For it appeared
there was to be no engagement, although all Brookshire had expected it.
Instead of it, came the announcement of the tragic truth, the girl's
hurried departure, and the passionate feeling on her behalf of people
like the Roughsedges, or her quondam critic, the Vicar.
Marsham, thereupon, had become conscious of a wind of unpopularity
blowing through his constituency. Some of the nice women of the
neighborhood, with whom he had been always hitherto a welcome and
desired guest, had begun to neglect him; men who would never have
dreamed of allowing their own sons to marry a girl in Diana's position,
greeted him with a shade less consideration than usual; and the Liberal
agent in the division had suddenly ceased to clamor for his attendance
and speeches at rural meetings. There could be no question that by some
means or other the story had got abroad--no doubt in a most inaccurate
and unjust form--and was doing harm.
Reflections of this kind were passing through his mind as he crossed
Hyde Park Corner on his way to Eaton Square. Opposite St. George's
Hospital he suddenly became aware of Sir James Chide on the other side
of the road. At sight of him, Marsham waved his hand, quickening his
pace that he might come up with him. Sir James, seeing him, gave him a
perfunctory greeting, and suddenly turned aside to hail a hansom, into
which he jumped, and was carried promptly out of sight.
Marsham was conscious of a sudden heat in the face. He had never yet
been so sharply reminded of a changed relation. After Diana's departure
he had himself written to Chide, defending his own share in the matter,
speaking bitterly of the action taken by his mother and sister, and
lamenting that Diana had not been willing to adopt the waiting and
temporizing policy, which alone offered any hope of subduing his
mother's opposition. Marsham declared--persuading himself, as he wrote,
of the complete truth of the statement--that he had been quite willing
to relinquish his father's inheritance for Diana's sake, and that it was
her own action alone that had separated them. Sir James had rather
coldly acknowledged the letter, with the remark that few words were best
on a subject so painful; and since then there had been no intimacy
between the two men. Marsham could only think with discomfort of the
scene at Felton Park, when a man of passionate nature and romantic heart
had allowed him access to the most sacred and tragic memories of his
life. Sir James felt, he supposed, that he had been cheated out of his
confidence--cheated out of his sympathy. Well!--it was unjust!
* * * * *
He reached Eaton Square in good time for dinner, and found his mother in
the drawing-room.
"You look tired, Oliver," she said, as he kissed her.
"It's the east wind, I suppose--beastly day!"
Lady Lucy surveyed him, as he stood, moody and physically chilled, with
his back to the fire.
"Was the debate interesting?"
"Ferrier made a very disappointing speech. All our fellows are getting
restive."
Lady Lucy looked astonished.
"Surely they ought to trust his judgment! He has done so splendidly for
the party."
Marsham shook his head.
"I wish you would use your influence," he said, slowly. "There is a
regular revolt coming on. A large number of men on our side say they
won't be led by him; that if we come in, he must go to the Lords."
Lady Lucy started.
"Oliver!" she said, indignantly, "you know it would break his heart!"
And before both minds there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he
himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election--the Liberals in
office--himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the
Commons--with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord
Broadstone should die or retire--this indeed had been Ferrier's working
understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on
the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of
the Commons, with whatever compensations, could only mean to him, and to
the world in general, the failure of his career.
"They would give him Foreign Affairs, of course," said Marsham, after a
pause.
"Nothing that they could give him would make up!" said Lady Lucy, with
energy. "You certainly, Oliver, could not lend yourself to any intrigue
of the kind."
Marsham shrugged his shoulders.
"My position is not exactly agreeable! I don't agree with Ferrier, and I
do agree with the malcontents. Moreover, when we come in, they will
represent the strongest element in the party, with the future in
their hands."
Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes.
"You can't desert him, Oliver!--not you!"
"Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "The
game sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle."
Lady Lucy--alarmed--laid a hand on his.
"Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well as
this year."
"Yes--up to two months ago."
His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver often
allowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother and
son were not thereby improved.
Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, Lady
Lucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupied
with when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashed
through his mind one of those recollections that are only apparently
incongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother had
given the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed,
prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less than
moderately amused. The dinner had dragged; the guests had left early;
and he had come back to the drawing-room after seeing off the last of
them, stifled with yawns. Waste of food, waste of money, waste of
time--waste of everything! He had suddenly been seized with a passionate
sense of the dulness of his home life; with a wonder how long he could
go on submitting to it. And as he recalled these feelings--as of dust
in the mouth--there struck across them an image from a dream-world.
Diana sat at the head of the long table; Diana in white, with her
slender neck, and the blue eyes, with their dear short-sighted look, her
smile, and the masses of her dark hair. The dull faces on either side
faded away; the lights, the flowers were for her--for her alone!
He roused himself with an effort. His mother was putting up her
knitting, which, indeed, she had only pretended to work at.
"We must go and dress, Oliver. Oh! I forgot to tell you--Alicia arrived
an hour ago."
"Ah!" He raised his eyebrows indifferently. "I hope she's well?"
"Brilliantly well--and as handsome as ever."
"Any love-affairs?"
"Several, apparently--but nothing suitable," said Lady Lucy, with a
smile, as she rose and gathered together her possessions.
"It's time, I think, that Alicia made up her mind. She has been out a
good while."
It gave him a curious pleasure--he could hardly tell why--to say this
slighting thing of Alicia. After all, he had no evidence that she had
done anything unfriendly or malicious at the time of the crisis.
Instinctively, he had ranged her then and since as an enemy--as a person
who had worked against him. But, in truth, he knew nothing for certain.
Perhaps, after the foolish passages between them a year ago, it was
natural that she should dislike and be critical of Diana. As to her
coming now, it was completely indifferent to him. It would be a good
thing, no doubt, for his mother to have her companionship.
As he opened the door for Lady Lucy to leave the room, he noticed her
gray and fragile look.
"I believe you have had enough of London, mother. You ought to be
getting abroad."
"I am all right," said Lady Lucy, hastily. "Like you, I hate east winds.
Oliver, I have had a charming letter from Mr. Heath."
Mr. Heath had been for some months Marsham's local correspondent on the
subject of the new Liberal hall in the county town. Lady Lucy had
recently sent a check to the Committee, which had set all their building
anxieties at rest.
Oliver looked down rather moodily upon her.
"It's pretty easy to write charming letters when people send you money.
It would have been more to the purpose, I think, if they had taken a
little trouble to raise some themselves!"
Lady Lucy flushed.
"I don't suppose Dunscombe is a place with many rich people in it," she
said, in a voice of protest, as she passed him. Her thoughts hurt her as
she mounted the stairs. Oliver had not received her gift--for, after
all, it was a gift to him--very graciously. And the same might have been
said of various other things that she had tried to do for him during the
preceding months.
As to Marsham, while he dressed, he too recalled other checks that had
been recently paid for him, other anxious attempts that had been made to
please him. Since Diana had vanished from the scene, no complaisance, no
liberality had been too much for his mother's good-will. He had never
been so conscious of an atmosphere of money--much money. And there were
moments--what he himself would have described as morbid moments--when
it seemed to him the price of blood; when he felt himself to be a mere,
crude moral tale embodied and walking about. Yet how ridiculous! What
reasonable man, knowing what money means, and the power of it, but must
have flinched a little under such a test as had been offered to him? His
flinching had been nothing final or damnable. It was Diana, who, in her
ignorance of the world, had expected him to take the sacrifice as though
it were nothing and meant nothing--as no honest man of the world, in
fact, could have taken it.
* * * * *
When Marsham descended he found Alicia already in possession of the
drawing-room. Her gown of a brilliant shade of blue put the room out of
joint, and beside the startling effect of her hair, all the washed-out
decoration and conventional ornament which it contained made a worse
effect than usual. There was nothing conventional or effaced about
Alicia. She had become steadily more emphatic, more triumphant, more
self-confident.
"Well, what have you been doing with yourself?--nothing but politics?"
The careless, provocative smile with which the words were accomplished
roused a kind of instant antagonism in Marsham.
"Nothing--nothing, at least, worth anybody's remembering."
"You spoke at Dunscombe last week."
"I did."
"And you went to help Mr. Collins at the Sheffield bye-election."
"I did. I am very much flattered that you know so much about my
movements."
"I always know everything that you are doing," said Alicia,
quietly--"you, and Cousin Lucy."
"You have the advantage of me then"; his laugh was embarrassed, but not
amicable; "for I am afraid I have no idea what you have been doing
since Easter!"
"I have been at home, flirting with the Curate," said Alicia, with a
laugh. As she sat, with her head thrown back against the chair, the
light sparkling on her white skin, on her necklace of yellow topazes,
and the jewelled fan in her hands, the folds of blue chiffon billowing
round her, there could be no doubt of her effectiveness. Marsham could
not help laughing, too.
"Charming for the Curate! Did he propose to you?"
"Certainly. I think we were engaged for twenty-four hours."
"That you might see what it was like? _Et après?_"
"He was afraid he had mistaken my character"
Marsham laughed out.
"Poor victim! May I ask what you did it for?"
He found himself looking at her with curiosity and a certain anger. To
be engaged, even for twenty-four hours, means that you allow your
betrothed the privileges of betrothal. And in the case of Alicia no man
was likely to forego them. She was really a little too unscrupulous!
"What I did it for? He was so nice and good-looking!"
"And there was nobody else?"
"Nobody. Home was a desert."
"H'm!" said Marsham. "Is he broken-hearted?"
Alicia shrugged her shoulders a little.
"I don't think so. I write him such charming letters. It is all
simmering down beautifully."
Marsham moved restlessly to and fro, first putting down a lamp, then
fidgeting with an evening paper. Alicia never failed to stir in him the
instinct of sex, in its combative and critical form; and hostile as he
believed he was to her, her advent had certainly shaken him out of his
depression.
She meanwhile watched him with her teasing eyes, apparently enjoying his
disapproval.
"I know exactly what you are thinking," she said, presently.
"I doubt it."
"Heartless coquette!" she said, mimicking his voice. "Never mind--her
turn will come presently!"
"You don't allow my thoughts much originality."
"Why should I? Confess!--you did think that?"
Her small white teeth flashed in the smile she gave him. There was an
exuberance of life and spirits about her that was rather disarming. But
he did not mean to be disarmed.
"I did not think anything of the kind," he said, returning to the fire
and looking down upon her; "simply because I know you too well."
Alicia reddened a little. It was one of her attractions that she flushed
so easily.
"Because you know me too well?" she repeated. "Let me see. That means
that you don't believe my turn will ever come?"
Marsham smiled.
"Your turn for what?" he said, dryly.
"I think we are getting mixed up!" Her laugh was as musical as he
remembered it. "Let's begin again. Ah! here comes Cousin Lucy!"
Lady Lucy entered, ushering in an elderly relation, a Miss Falloden,
dwelling also in Eaton Square: a comfortable lady with a comfortable
income; a social stopper of chinks, moreover, kind and talkative; who
was always welcome on occasions when life was not too strenuous or the
company too critical. Marsham offered her his arm, and the little party
made its way to the dining-room.
* * * * *
"Do you go back to the House, Oliver, to-night?" asked his mother, as
the entree went round.
He replied in the affirmative, and resumed his conversation with Alicia.
She was teasing him on the subject of some of his Labor friends in the
House of Commons. It appeared that she had made the Curate, who was a
Christian Socialist, take her to a Labor Conference at Bristol, where
all the leaders were present, and her account of the proceedings and the
types was both amusing and malicious. It was the first time that Marsham
had known her attempt any conversation of the kind, and he recognized
that her cleverness was developing. But many of the remarks she made on
persons well known to him annoyed him extremely, and he could not help
trying to punish her for them. Alicia, however, was not easily punished.
She evaded him with a mosquito-like quickness, returning to the charge
as soon as he imagined himself to have scored with an irrelevance or an
absurdity which would have been exasperating in a man, but had somehow
to be answered and politely handled from a woman. He lost his footing
continually; and as she had none to lose, she had, on the whole, the
best of it.
[Illustration: "ALICIA UPRIGHT IN HER CORNER--OLIVER, DEEP IN HIS
ARMCHAIR"]
Then--in the very midst of it--he remembered, with a pang, another
skirmish, another battle of words--with another adversary, in a
different scene. The thrill of that moment in the Tallyn drawing-room,
when he had felt himself Diana's conqueror; delighting in her rosy
surrender, which was the mere sweet admission of a girl's limitations;
and in its implied appeal, timid and yet proud, to a victor who was also
a friend--all this he was conscious of, by association, while the
sparring with Alicia still went on. His tongue moved under the stimulus
of hers; but in the background of the mind rose the images and
sensations of the past.
Lady Lucy, meanwhile, looked on, well pleased. She had not seen Oliver
so cheerful, or so much inclined to talk, since "that unfortunate
affair," and she was proportionately grateful to Alicia.
Marsham returned to the drawing-room with the ladies, declaring that he
must be off in twenty minutes. Alicia settled herself in a corner of the
sofa, and played with Lady Lucy's dog. Marsham endeavored, for a little,
to do his duty by Miss Falloden; but in a few minutes he had drifted
back to Alicia. This time she made him talk of Parliament, and the two
or three measures in which he was particularly interested. She showed,
indeed, a rather astonishing acquaintance with the details of those
measures, and the thought crossed Marsham's mind: "Has she been getting
them up?--and why?" But the idea did not make the conversation she
offered him any the less pleasant. Quite the contrary. The mixture of
teasing and deference which she showed him, in the course of it, had
been the secret of her old hold upon him. She reasserted something of it
now, and he was not unwilling. During the morose and taciturn phase
through which he had been passing there had been no opportunity or
desire to talk of himself, especially to a woman. But Alicia had always
made him talk of himself, and he had forgotten how agreeable it
might be.
He threw himself down beside her, and the time passed. Lady Lucy and
Miss Falloden had retired into the back drawing-room, where the one
knitted and the other gossiped. But as the clock struck a quarter to
eleven Lady Lucy called, in some astonishment: "So you are not going
back to the House, Oliver?"
He sprang to his feet.
"Heavens!" He looked at the clock, irresolute. "Well, there's nothing
much on, mother. I don't think I need."
And he subsided again into his chair beside Alicia.
Miss Falloden looked at Lady Lucy with a meaning smile.
"I didn't know they were such friends!" she said, under her breath.
Lady Lucy made no reply. But her eyes travelled through the archway
dividing the two rooms to the distant figures framed within it--Alicia,
upright in her corner, the red gold of her hair shining against the
background of a white azalea; Oliver, deep in his arm-chair, his long
legs crossed, his hands gesticulating.
Lady Niton's sarcasms recurred to her. She was not sure whether she
welcomed or disliked the idea. But, after all, why not?