Sir Robert looked up sharply.
“I should say,” said he quietly, “that it wasn’t true.”
Lady Sarah bit her lip, disconcerted.
“I swear to you,” said she earnestly, after a short pause, “that it was she who gave me back the picture and begged me to give it to you and to ask you to say nothing, to ask nothing, but to be content to have recovered it.”
He turned round to face his wife.
“Ask her to come and speak to me,” said he quickly.
“If I do, she will leave the house at once. She told me so,” said she sharply.
Sir Robert rose from his chair, and paced up and down the room.
“There is something more in this,” said he with decision.
“Do you doubt my word?”
“Not for a moment, of course. But what I mean is that what she has told you is not the whole of the truth. She is shielding some one else, the guilty person.”
Lady Sarah drew herself up.
“What is the divinity that hedges Miss Pembury,” she asked haughtily, “that she must be considered incapable of any sort of error?”
He stopped and answered her steadily.
“She is a perfectly noble and irreproachable lady,” he said, “and as incapable of a mean and despicable theft as you are yourself.”
His wife looked down, with the blood rising in her cheeks.
“You will then be satisfied with her message. You won’t try to find out anything more?” she said in a low voice.
“I will say nothing to any one at present,” he said quietly. “I think, Sarah, you must be satisfied with that.”
She looked at him doubtfully, but affected to think that he had given her the promise she wanted; and then she kissed him and tripped out of the room.
But she left her husband in a state of acute distress. It was not possible for him to believe that his wife had deliberately deceived him, although even that sometimes seemed more likely than that the patient, high-minded Rhoda should have been guilty of deception and ingratitude.
But he felt sure that he had only heard part of the story, and the conclusion to which he still clung, after turning the matter over in his mind, was that Rhoda was shielding some one else. Who that some one was, however, he had no idea. And that it could be the man who had been dear to him for so many years, in conjunction with his own wife, who had robbed him, never for one moment entered the baronet’s mind.
He was far too loyal himself to suspect disloyalty in his nearest and dearest, and his conjecture was that it was some member of his household, one of the under servants, and not one of those who had been in his service many years, who had committed the theft both of the picture and of the snuff-boxes.
Knowing, as he did, that Rhoda had been the first to discover the theft of the picture, he decided that she must have found out more than she confessed to have done, but that she held her peace until she had forced the thief to restore at least part of the plunder.
Withal he was hurt to think that she had not come straight to him herself. Surely she might have known that she could come to him without fear, and that he would temper justice with mercy.
The consequence of this slight feeling of injury was a certain coldness in his manner when he met her at luncheon; and the unhappy Rhoda at once jumped to the conclusion that he suspected her of the theft. She thus did less than justice to him, and more than justice to his wife. For she little thought that the artful Lady Sarah had done her very best to divert suspicion from herself and Jack Rotherfield by accusing the companion of her little son.
Rhoda was heartbroken. She was crying quietly by herself in a distant corner of the grounds, when she suddenly found two long lean arms put round her neck from behind, and heard Minnie Mallory’s voice in her ear, saying in tones of encouragement:
“Look here, don’t you cry. Aunt Sally’s been making mischief, I suppose, with Uncle Bertie?”
Rhoda was startled, and turning quickly, asked the girl what she meant.
By this time Minnie, with a battered and bent hat cocked over one eye, was squatting on the grass like a large-sized toad, looking up at her keenly out of her light eyes.
“What was in that gun-case?” she asked suddenly.
Rhoda dashed away her own tears and stared at the girl in dismay. Was Minnie a witch?
“W—w—what gun-case?” stammered she.
Minnie gave her a supercilious glance and a shrug.
“Oh, you know,” she said. “That gun-case you took out of Jack’s car just before he went away.”
“A gun, I suppose,” Rhoda replied quickly.
“Then what did you take it indoors for?”
There was a pause. Minnie shrugged her shoulders again.
“Oh, of course, you needn’t tell me unless you like, but I can’t help guessing, can I? And I can’t help wondering why Jack looked so awfully cross when he came out again.”
“You see quite enough, without being told anything,” was Rhoda’s comment.
Minnie nodded.
“Well, I do keep my eyes open, especially in a house like this, where there is so much to see. But I shouldn’t cry, if I were you. Because nobody will ever blameyoufor anything that ever happens here.”
There was a weird air of prophecy about this remark which made Rhoda feel uncomfortable. But she only sighed, and said:
“Nothing that happens will matter to me, for I am going away.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” croaked the witch.
“You’ll see,” said Rhoda, as she rose with an air of determination, and started to walk back to the house.
The mocking laughter of Minnie sounded uncannily in her ears, as she disappeared into the yew path.
She went straight to the study and knocked at the door. Almost at the same moment she became aware that some one was talking inside the room, and she would fain have retired. But as Sir Robert called out “Come in,” she had to enter, blushing and apologetic, and then she found that Jack Rotherfield and Lady Sarah were both in the room with the baronet.
“I’m so sorry, I thought you were alone,” said Rhoda.
“And he will be alone in a moment,” cried Lady Sarah merrily. “Jack’s had a breakdown, and he had to come back, and he’s been telling us all about it.”
It flashed through Rhoda’s mind that, as Jack’s errand to town had probably been connected with the disposal of the Romney, the breakdown had not been a very serious nor a very inconvenient one. And then, rendered suspicious by circumstances, she noted that Lady Sarah, in spite of her statement that she was going, did not go. And it occurred to Rhoda that Lady Sarah wished to avoid the possibility of atête-à-têtebetween her husband and Rhoda.
Sir Robert turned to the girl courteously, and asked what he could do for her. In a low voice, striving to repress every sign of emotion, Rhoda said that she would be glad if she might leave the Mill-house at once, and return home to her parents.
The baronet did not seem surprised.
“Of course we can’t keep you against your will,” he said. “But I am very sorry, and we shall miss you very much. Have you spoken to Lady Sarah about it?”
She saw that he too was striving to speak more calmly than he felt.
“No. I thought I ought to come to you first.”
“I can only repeat that I am more sorry than can say. And as for Caryl——”
He broke off, deeply moved. There was a pause, during which Rhoda noticed that though Lady Sarah appeared to be chattering idly to Jack she was watching with the keenest attention what went on between her husband and Caryl’s companion.
“Thank you,” said Rhoda. “I will say good-bye to Caryl at once, if I may.”
“You are going to-day, then? It’s rather sudden? For your own sake, if I might suggest, I should say you had better wait till to-morrow. You look tired, and unfit for a journey.”
She raised her eyes to his face and gave him one swift glance. There was a world of feeling in her own sensitive face as she looked at him: gratitude, regret, affection, and even reproach, all expressed themselves in that one quick up-look of her tender blue eyes.
And the answering look which Sir Robert threw at her was hardly less eloquent. There was in his grave face a look of earnest affection, and an expression of almost childlike helplessness in the face of an unexpected blow.
Rhoda choked down a sob, and crossed the room quickly to Lady Sarah.
“I’m going away,” she said quickly; and without thinking it necessary to give any explanation to a lady who, she was sure, must understand her decision without it, she added: “I’m going upstairs to say good-bye to little Caryl.”
With Lady Sarah’s perfunctory regrets ringing in her ears, mingled with the polite expressions of surprise from Jack Rotherfield, she went out of the room.
She crept up the stairs with her heart beating very fast. If it was hard to leave Sir Robert, what would the parting with poor little Caryl be?
He was lying by the window of his sitting-room, which had once been the nursery, and he clapped his hands as she came in.
“Oh, Rhoda, Rhoda, what a long time you’ve been! I’d thought you had forgotten me!” he cried, as soon as he caught sight of her.
And as she looked at his thin face, and saw the flush of pleasure in his cheeks and the brightness which came into his eyes, as the nurse got up, and, smiling, gave her chair to the new-comer, Rhoda felt as if her heart would burst.
“My dear Caryl,” she said as she bent to kiss him, “I’m afraid you won’t like to hear something I’ve got to tell you.”
A look of vivid intelligence appeared on his face, and he glanced anxiously towards the nurse.
“Oh, is it what she says?” he asked tremulously. “Are you going away?”
Rhoda turned quickly. Had the possibility of her going been discussed, then, in the servants’ hall?
“Yes, I’ve been here such a long time that my father and mother want to see me,” she said, trying to speak brightly. “You wouldn’t begrudge them a sight of their own daughter, would you?”
“Not just a look at them, I wouldn’t begrudge you that,” he said. And then he called, “Nurse!”
The girl came back into the room.
“What is it, Master Caryl?”
“Ask my father to come and see me, please.”
Rhoda bent quickly to kiss him again, but he detained her, clinging to her.
“You must wait, you must wait a minute,” he said feverishly.
And the touch of his hot hands made her shiver.
“If you want me to say good-bye to Sir Robert and Lady Sarah, I have just done so,” said she.
But Caryl would say nothing about that.
“Sit down,” he said, “and tell me what you’ve been doing, and where you’ve been. You’ve never left me so long alone before.”
“Well, I’ve been in the grounds, Caryl.”
“Yes, I saw you go. And I thought it very unkind of you not to take me. But I know why you didn’t,” and he pressed her hand with his little thin fingers. “You wanted to cry, that’s why you wanted to be by yourself. And that’s why you want to go home. You’re not happy, Rhoda. You look so different from what you did at first, before mama came back.”
“It’s nothing to do with mama, Caryl,” said Rhoda quickly.
“Oh no. But you have been crying, though?”
“Perhaps I have. Perhaps I don’t like leaving you, Caryl.”
He sighed, and played with her fingers quietly, and said very little more till his father came into the room.
Sir Robert looked flushed and uneasy; he caught sight of Rhoda at once; and the presence of the lady seemed to make him graver than ever.
“Come here, papa.”
The baronet came and bent over his little couch.
“Give me your hand,” said the boy.
The baronet obeyed, still without looking at Rhoda, who was trying to withdraw her fingers from the tight clutch of the child.
“Papa,” said Caryl, “I sent for you because I want you to tell Rhoda not to go away and leave me.”
Sir Robert gazed down at his little son.
“When a lady makes up her mind to do a thing, Caryl, it’s not kind or courteous to try to dissuade her,” said he.
But Caryl persisted.
“I don’t believe she really wants to go, papa. I think she’ll stay if you ask her to,” said he.
“No, no, Caryl, I must go,” said Rhoda hoarsely.
Sir Robert looked up then, and his eyes met hers. In his there was a look of grave, tender kindness of gentle reproach, which cut her to the heart.
“I never thought, Caryl, that she could have left you,” he said in a low voice.
And Rhoda, bending suddenly very low over the child, hid her face and whispered:
“Caryl, you’re don’t know what you’re asking, dear, but—I’ll stay.”
Sir Robertwas watching the pair curiously: noting the feverish gladness with which the boy clung to Rhoda’s hand, and the tenderness with which she, in return, bent over him.
It cost him a sharp pang to think that this was just the sort of way in which he should have liked his wife to bend over their invalid son. There was a motherly kindness in Rhoda’s every look and touch, as she smoothed the boy’s pillow or smiled at him, that realised completely Sir Robert’s ideal of what a mother ought to be to her child.
Yet it was a stranger in blood who filled this office to the boy, and the visits of Caryl’s mother were hasty affairs, undertaken in the intervals of the serious business of life, motoring, tennis-playing, dancing, travelling.
It was impossible that a bitter thought should not come into his mind at the sight.
Caryl turned his head, with a smile, to his father.
“I thought it would be all right, papa,” said he, “when you came.”
Rhoda could scarcely suppress a sob. She knew something of what was passing in Sir Robert’s mind, for he had often uttered words expressive of his regret that Lady Sarah was not more domestic in her tastes. That that aspiration chiefly concerned the delicate boy it was not difficult to understand.
But now that the matter was settled, that Rhoda had promised to remain at the Mill-house, there was another question to be answered. Why had she been so anxious to go away? What, too, did she mean by these words, uttered half-unconsciously, as it seemed, to the boy: “You don’t know what you’re asking!”
Sir Robert had supposed, naturally enough, when Rhoda told him that afternoon that she wished to leave the house, that it was the unpleasant affair of the lost picture which had caused her so suddenly to make up her mind to leave a house where she had been subjected to such an alarming experience as that of the previous night. To a nervous woman, the night alarm, followed by a mysterious and not yet explained sequel, must have been quite sufficient to make her disinclined to stay in a house where such things had happened.
Now, however, on overhearing these whispered words to Caryl, which implied that she had something still to fear, Sir Robert was moved to strong curiosity.
He looked at her intently, and Rhoda blushed under his scrutiny.
Meanwhile Caryl, delighted to have carried his point, was playing affectionately with her right hand, and pressing it against his cheek.
Sir Robert was anxious to have an opportunity of putting some questions to Rhoda, and, with that idea in his mind, he smiled down at his little son and said:
“And now you’ve persuaded her to stay with you, Caryl, you mustn’t be greedy, and expect to have her all to yourself. You must let mama see a little of her too, and me.”
The boy looked up, smiling.
“I want her the most,” said he. “You’ve got your pictures, papa, and mama’s got Jack.”
The words came quite naturally from the child’s mouth, but they produced a most curious and painful impression upon his two hearers. Sir Robert seemed for the moment stunned by them, as, glancing at Rhoda, he saw upon her face an expression of dismay which was like a sudden illumination to him.
“Yes, we’ve got Jack too, of course,” he said presently, recovering himself although there was a change in his voice, “but he isn’t here always.”
“Nearly always, when mama’s here,” persisted the boy simply. “And you’ve always got your pictures, haven’t you? Anne says you’ve got back the one you thought was stolen.”
Again there was a look upon Rhoda’s face which roused Sir Robert’s keenest attention and interest.
“Yes, I’ve got my picture back,” said he. “Who told you about that?”
“Oh, I heard Anne talking about it to Mrs. Hawkes. That was this morning. And then when Anne came in a little while ago she told me you had got it back, nobody knew how.”
Rhoda turned her head away, feeling that there was a guilty look on her face which Sir Robert’s unusually penetrating gaze seemed to challenge. She did not want to meet his eyes again; ever since those first words of the boy’s about Jack she had been conscious of an excitement, a restlessness in Sir Robert’s demeanour, which were quite unusual with him, and she dreaded the thought of atête-à-têtewith him—which, however, she saw to be inevitable.
“By the bye, Miss Pembury, I should like to hear your account of the return of the picture,” said the baronet in the gentlest of voices, as Rhoda took the opportunity, when father and son were looking at each other, to leave her post by the side of the couch, and to glide hastily towards the door.
He had followed her and was holding the door open for her.
“Are you going to take Rhoda away, papa?” piped out the small voice from the couch near the window.
“Not for very long. I’ll ring the bell for Anne to come back to you for half an hour,” said Sir Robert.
But the boy pouted.
“I don’t want Anne,” said he. “I can wait here by myself till Rhoda comes back. Don’t be long, don’t let papa keep you long,” he cried, waving his thin hand as she went out.
Rhoda smiled back at him, with a trembling lip. She would have given the world to avoid the interview which the baronet was determined to force upon her. There was a gravity in his look quite different from the calm serenity of his everyday expression; she knew that an ugly thought concerning his wife and Jack Rotherfield had been obtruded upon his mind for the first time.
Was it better that he should know the danger? Perhaps so. But in any case it was a terrible thing for the girl that she had unconsciously helped to bring it home to his mind. The boy’s innocent words might perhaps have passed unheeded, but for the point she herself had all unconsciously and unwillingly given them by her startled look.
And then, following that moment of revelation, there had come the speech about the picture, and again she thought that her face might perhaps have revealed some guilty knowledge concerning it.
They went slowly downstairs, Rhoda first, Sir Robert following in silence. It was not until they reached the hall that Sir Robert, taking a hat from the hall table, turned to her and said:
“Shall we take a turn round the garden? I want to speak to you.”
There was no help for it. She bowed her head, and they passed out quickly by the garden-door, for she understood that his intention was to avoid Lady Sarah and possible interruptions, to which they might have been liable if they had gone straight to the study.
He led the way quickly to the water, crossed the rustic bridge, and so reached a beautiful grass path which could not be seen from the house.
Here he slackened his steps, and then he said in a very gentle tone:
“Please don’t look so frightened, my dear Miss Pembury. I am not going to ask any awkward questions, believe me. I may say at once that I know you are shielding some one who was concerned in the disappearance of my picture, but I am not going to press you for any details which you may not feel inclined to give me. But I have had a rude shock within the last half-hour, following on an anxious time in connection with the disappearance of first the snuff-boxes and then the ‘Lady Hamilton.’ And I am obliged to come to you for—for advice, and—for guidance.”
“I’m afraid I’m too stupid to be able to advise any one,” said Rhoda timidly.
He made a gesture of denial.
“No, no. I quite understand the difficulty you are in, and I hope I shall not have to say anything to pain you. It is very hard on such a young woman as you are to find herself in such a position as that you are in. But you will help me if you can, I’m sure.”
“Of course I would help you in any way I could. You won’t press me to betray any secrets, I’m sure.”
He looked at her quickly.
“Tell me,” he said quite sharply, “whether, as far as you can see, I am neglecting any part of my duty to—to any member of my—my family.”
Rhoda drew a long breath, and then suddenly found courage. Turning her blue eyes full upon him, she said, while the colour deepened in her cheeks and her lips quivered:
“Yes, Sir Robert, I think you are.”
Although he had invited her to be candid, this speech evidently took him by surprise. He stared at her apprehensively, and then said with the utmost meekness:
“Will you tell me—to whom?”
“I think,” stammered the girl, her breath coming fast, “that you are neglecting your duty to your wife.”
This was direct indeed. He stopped short, made her stop too, and faced her roundly:
“How?” said he.
Rhoda knew that she must go on now, and she poured out all that was in her heart, without more ado.
“I think,” she said, throwing out her words in little groups, with a strange, staccato stop after every few syllables, “that you ought to be with her more, not to let her go away without you, not to let her choose her own companions and friends. I think you ought to insist upon being her companion, her friend, yourself. Of course I know how hard it would be—that you don’t care for the same things or the same places. But since she won’t bend and give way, and do as she ought, I think you ought to do it all for her. You ought not to yield to her every caprice, to let her indulge every whim. If you go on running down one path while she is running down one that isn’t even parallel with yours, how can it end but in your finding yourselves some day, so far apart that—that you can never come together again?”
It was plain speaking with a vengeance, and Rhoda would never have ventured upon it in cold blood. But when she was thus unexpectedly challenged by Sir Robert, she felt, honouring, respecting, loving him as she did, that there was nothing for her but to be daring, audacious, wholly, flagrantly honest, and to fling down thus before him her own views, without hesitation, without pause, and then, if necessary, ask for pardon.
But there was no need for that. In Sir Robert’s face, as he listened to her, with head averted, tightly pressed lips, and eyes that seemed at last to open to look out upon the world around him as it was, and not as it ought to have been, there was a look which showed Rhoda that, however painful her words might be to utter and to hear, she had done right in speaking them.
Like a succession of blows her sentences fell upon him, each helping to drive home to him the truth which he, good, kind-hearted, amiable man that he was, had so long been in danger of ignoring.
He knew that there was no word of exaggeration in what she said, he was conscious that she was, on the whole, merciful to him. But her indictment was a severe one nevertheless, and at first he reeled under it.
There was a long pause, during which poor Rhoda, recovering from the impulse of passion which had urged her on, became more and more timid and apologetic, until the light faded out of her eyes and the tears welled up to them.
He, meanwhile, said nothing, but looked away to the hills, with the setting sun behind them, and stood so still that she wondered whether she had stunned him by her onslaught.
A sob escaped her, and then he turned slowly.
“That it should be left to you, a girl, to teach me my duty!” he said most gently. “I’m ashamed of myself, as I ought to be. Pray Heaven I haven’t left it too late. Don’t cry, child, don’t speak until you’ve heard what I think. It’s just this: it’s a thousand pities I didn’t know you as well as I do now half a dozen years ago. True, you were very young then, but I dare say you had ten times more sense, even then, in your head, than I have in mine now. Dry your eyes, child, dry your eyes,” he went on in a brighter and more energetic tone: “You’ve got more to tell me, more help to give. Tell me, what you would advise? If it isn’t too late how shall I begin?”
Her timidity, her hesitation were gone again in a moment. Rhoda was so desperately interested in him and his happiness that, as soon as an opening came for her to help, her instinct came to her aid and once more she said the right thing in the right way.
“Take her away,” said she. “Don’t let her go away by herself, but make her travel with you. When you’re once away from your pictures and curios you will have to depend upon her. And you must teach her to depend upon you.”
The advice was so shrewd, so good, that he looked at her for a few moments in silent admiration before he said:
“It’s excellent advice, but do you think I can take it? Where should we go? I should be lost——”
“Ah!” cried Rhoda, putting up her finger warningly. “You mustn’t be. That will be the hard part of it for you; in fact all the hardship will be yours. But you will have to take it, for she won’t help you.”
He nodded in meek but vague acquiescence.
“And where am I to take her?” he asked submissively.
“Why not to Egypt for the winter?” said Rhoda boldly. “You will find plenty to interest you there.” And already she saw a light of interest in his eyes, “and the very novelty of the thing will be enough to please Lady Sarah.”
He nodded appreciatively.
“It’s a good suggestion certainly. But there will be difficulties.”
“Plenty of them,” admitted Rhoda. “But nothing that you won’t be able to get over, now that you see there is danger in leaving her too much to herself and her own ways.”
“Yes, yes. And Caryl——”
“You can trust him with me, can’t you?”
The look of straightforward gratitude and trust on his face as he exchanged looks with her was balm to her heart.
“And now,” he said, “I can’t thank you. I can only pray that—that your advice has come—in time.”
The look of gravity on his face showed Rhoda, who shivered as she glanced at him, that he appreciated the extent of the danger to which his easy-going temper had brought him and his wife.
Rhoda dared not say any more; she was in terror now lest he should proceed to question her about the picture and its restoration. But the baronet’s whole attention was absorbed by the peril to his wife, and he had forgotten everything else in the one theme.
So Rhoda was able to make her escape to the house, where she was met on the stairs by Minnie, mocking, triumphant, stretching two long, thin arms across to bar her passage.
“I told you you would have to stay, didn’t I?” asked she.
Rhoda felt almost shocked at the girl’s uncanny perspicacity.
“Oh, yes, yes, it wasn’t so difficult to predict that,” she said, as she dived under one of Minnie’s arms, and fled upstairs.
It was not until dinner-time that Rhoda met Lady Sarah or Sir Robert again; and she perceived, at the first glance, at Lady Sarah and Jack that they were both on thorns as to what had happened during the afternoon. They looked apprehensively from her to Sir Robert and back again, as if knowing that there was something interesting for them to hear.
Lady Sarah was most caressing and sweet to her husband, who received her advances with his usual gentleness, but not without a certain extra solemnity of manner which prepared her in some measure for what was to come.
It was not until dessert was reached, and the servants had left the room, that Sir Robert, glancing at his wife, and smiling in a manner which was not quite spontaneous, said:
“My dear, I’ve been preparing a little surprise for you, and I should like to know whether you will think it a pleasant one or not. Instead of your going to the Riviera this winter with your aunt and cousins I am going to take you to Egypt with me.”
“With you! You’re going to travel!” gasped Lady Sarah, quite openly dismayed by the prospect.
A cloud appeared on her husband’s brow.
“Yes,” said he. “I’ve never been there myself, and I think I should enjoy it as much as you would. I hope you won’t think my society will spoil the trip for you.”
“Oh, no, of course, I shall be delighted to have you,” said the beauty, in tones so cold and with such a vicious glance at Rhoda and such a frown of dismay at Jack that it was impossible not to understand that the announcement was a terrible shock to her. “And when did you make up your mind to this? Rather sudden, isn’t it?”
“Not too sudden, I hope.”
“Oh, no, of course not. It will be delightful.”
Lady Sarah’s manner was not encouraging. She at once changed the subject and began to talk about other things; and nothing more was said about the proposed trip until the ladies left the room. Then Lady Sarah seized Rhoda almost roughly by the arm, and asked:
“You had heard about this horrible Egypt trip, I suppose, before me?”
“Yes. Sir Robert mentioned it to me this afternoon.”
“Ah! You encouraged him in the wild idea, perhaps?”
“Oh, Lady Sarah, is it a wild idea on his part, to think that he would like to spend the winter with you instead of away from you?”
“Oh, pray don’t expect me to be sentimental. There’s nothing I hate so much. Egypt may be all very well for those who like it, and to play Darby and Joan may be a very nice way of spending one’s time before twenty-five and after fifty-five. But the years between those ages are better filled one’s own way; and I can assure you that, if you are leading Sir Robert to believe that he will find me a pleasant travelling companion, you are making a sad mistake.”
The acerbity of her tones frightened Rhoda, who would fain have believed the breach between husband and wife to be less wide than it really was. She said nothing to this. Lady Sarah looked at her keenly. She did not want to quarrel with Rhoda, who knew too much to be treated anything but well.
“You are a dear creature,” she said suddenly, as Rhoda said nothing to her tirade, “but I really do wish you would confine yourself to being sweet to Caryl, and nice to Sir Robert, and that you wouldn’t try to make silk out of spiders’ webs. That is what your labour is, when you try to make a humdrum domestic animal of an insignificant insect like me.”
She laughed lightly, and said no more about it. But Rhoda saw, as Lady Sarah flitted across to the piano and began to play lively music with her usual disregard of time and liberal allowance of wrong notes, that she meant mischief.
Minnie was a silent spectator of this scene, although perhaps, being curled up in an awkward position in a sofa at the far end of the drawing-room, she did not hear all that the ladies said.
No sooner did the gentlemen come in than Lady Sarah sprang up from the piano with a light in her eyes, and going straight to her husband led him out into the conservatory, and thence through the library into the study, where she stood up in front of him with her hands behind her, and challenged him fiercely.
“Who put this silly Egypt idea into your head, tell me that?” she asked imperiously, looking up with flashing brown eyes into his grave face.
It was still much graver than usual, by the way.
“What does it matter how the idea came to me,” said he gently, “if it be a good one?”
“But it isn’t. It’s a very bad one indeed,” said she hotly. “The absurdity of your giving up your cosy home which you love, to travel about with me! When you know very well I can take care of myself.”
Then he spoke with a sudden change of manner that silenced and alarmed her.
“My dear,” he said, as he held her arm in a grip which made it impossible for her to think of escape, “that is just what I am asking myself: whether you can take care of yourself, such care as my darling wife ought to take.”
“What—do you mean?” panted out the beauty, in sudden terror.
“I mean that it has been borne in upon me, by circumstances to which I need not refer, that I have not been as mindful of your best interests or my own, or our boy’s, as I ought to have been. I have begun to realise that a woman as beautiful and charming as you are, one so much younger, too, than her husband, ought not to be left so much to herself as you have been left. I ask you to forgive me, and to help me to do my duty better for the future.”
He bent down to kiss her, but she resisted him, holding herself stiffly away and flashing indignant glances at him.
“I know who has put these absurd ideas into your head,” she cried angrily. “I know who it is that has come between us, pretending to be so very good, and filling your mind, poisoning it with her wicked suspicions.”
“Suspicions!”
Sir Robert’s tone changed, grew hard, stern, alarming. Lady Sarah looked up at him with sudden shyness.
“What has she said about me?” she asked in a trembling voice.
But he was staring down intently into her face, as if he would read the very soul behind it.
“She has urged me to take more care of you, that’s all,” said he in a strange, wistful tone.
“I knew it was to her interference that I owed this disgraceful piece of impertinence,” she cried shrilly.
“Impertinence! Do you accuse me of that, in suggesting that I wish to travel with you?”
“N—n—o, of course not,” whispered Lady Sarah. “I mean it is impertinent of her to tell you wicked lies about me. It’s malicious, infamous! What has she said?”
Suddenly she stood very erect, looking up with keen inquiry into his face.
He took up the challenge at last.
“She has said nothing. But I see for myself that—you pass too much of your time with Jack!”
He was ashamed of himself as he uttered the words; it was horrible to have to hint at any fault in her. But he was driven into a corner, and had not enough finesse to avoid blurting out the truth.
She burst into a broken, mirthless, angry laugh.
“Oh indeed! I see too much of Jack! I pass too much time with him! And what of Miss Pembury? I don’t complain of your affection for her, or of the way in which she has wormed herself into your confidence, until your first thought is to take advice from her, even in a matter which concerns your wife.”
He stammered, surprised at her swift retort. But she went on, volubly, haughtily.
“If I don’t complain about your fondness for her, or about her insinuating herself into your affections and those of my own child, I really don’t see why you should make horrible insinuations about your own ward.”
He silenced her sternly.
“You forget yourself,” said he in a voice which frightened her by its sudden unexpected assumption of masculine powers and rights. “No one knows better than you do that I am incapable of disloyalty to you, that my only fault towards you has been my weakness in being unable to resist or control you. Never let me hear a word of this trivial pretence of jealousy again. You are not jealous, you could not be. God forgive me for saying it, but I only wish you were!”
The heartfelt emotion which thrilled in these words would have softened a woman less self-willed, less hardened in her own caprices than Lady Sarah. As it was, she was only frightened, not touched to tenderness. It was he who was ashamed of the feelings which threatened to overpower him.
Ashamed of his own weakness, and fearing that he was only irritating instead of softening her, he suddenly let her go, and raising her hand to his lips, pressed one tender kiss upon it and then, turning sharply away, felt in his pocket for the keys of his gallery and went out of the study.
Lady Sarah listened a few moments, until she heard the key turn in the gallery door, and knew that her husband had shut himself in with his treasures for the evening.
Then she quickly dried her own eyes, arranged her slightly disordered hair at a tiny gold-mounted mirror which she wore, with other pretty trifles, on her long neck-chain, and with a sigh, found her way quickly to the drawing-room, where Jack Rotherfield, looking rather anxious and perturbed, was affecting to try to flirt with Minnie.
Lady Sarah beckoned him to her side as soon as she entered the room, and with an angry glance at Rhoda, who was pretending to read a book to hide the emotion from which she was suffering, whispered hurriedly:
“It’s she who has put him up to this. You must get round her!”
Lady Sarahwas nothing if not versatile. She had scarcely whispered these warning words to Jack Rotherfield when she danced across the room to Minnie, and laughingly said:
“You lazy girl! You’re always curled up in a chair or a couch, and you never take any exercise. Come out and race me to the end of the grass path. I don’t believe you’ve been out all day.”
The ruse was not a very subtle one, and Rhoda and the sharp-eyed Minnie knew at once that Lady Sarah desired to leave the other two together.
Rhoda, however, walked at once quickly towards the door, with the intention of avoiding an unpleasanttête-à-tête.
But of course Jack Rotherfield was far too much accustomed to getting his own way with the ladies not to know how, in the most charming and winning manner, to frustrate her purpose.
Springing across the room with the agility of a boy, he stood, laughing, before the door, and said:
“No, no, you shan’t run away like that, as if I were an ogre. I have forgiven you your unkindness to me this morning, and in return you must forgive me if I was not very civil.”
But his effrontery, instead of succeeding with her, made her angry. Looking him steadily in the face, she said, her eyes flashing the steely fire that only blue eyes can show:
“You may be able to forgive me, Mr. Rotherfield, but it’s too late to ask me to forgiveyou.”
For a moment he was confounded, but he quickly recovered himself.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Must I say it? Remember, I shall have a good deal to say,” said she, below her breath.
He cast at her a look which frightened her, so full of undisguised malice was it.
“Say it and let us have it out,” he said defiantly.
“Well, you stole the picture; you were taking it up to town—to sell. And it was you, no doubt, who robbed Sir Robert of his snuff-boxes also. There is no injustice in taking that for granted.”
“Indeed! NowIshould have thought there was the cruellest injustice in accusing any man of a theft which you couldn’t prove up to the hilt.”
“Very well. We will leave out the matter of the snuff-boxes then. You can’t deny that you stole the picture.”
“I do deny it. If I had a hand in it, you know for whom it was done. You know whose extravagance has to be paid for, somehow or other; and that a man, placed in such a position as I, is forced to choose between betraying one of his friends or the other. I stood by the woman. What else could I do?”
Rhoda was aghast at the effrontery of this confession. There might be some truth in it, though she could not but think that his extravagance was quite as likely to have led up to the robbery as that of Lady Sarah.
In any case, his excuse was, of course, thoroughly bad.
“You presume to tell me you were in the right in helping a wife to rob her husband!” she cried.
“In the circumstances, what else could I do?”
“Anything else, of course,” Rhoda retorted contemptuously. “Sir Robert is the most generous man in the world.”
Jack raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, have you found him so?” sneered he.
Rhoda grew red, but did not affect to notice the sneer.
“He is quite unable to deny his wife anything she asks for. If she had gone to him with a full statement of the amount she wanted, he would have given it to her at once.”
“Your experience of him, unfortunately, scarcely tallies with that of his wife,” said Jack coolly. “She begged him to let her have some money, and he refused.”
“I don’t believe it. At least he would ask her for the amount of her debts and then undertake to pay them.”
“And is that what you call confidence, generosity. To treat her like a child, to make her give an account of every penny?”
It struck Rhoda forcibly, as she listened to this indictment of the baronet, that Jack had been trying to get money for his own expenses out of his late guardian by means of Lady Sarah: it was a shrewd guess, and Jack saw what was in her mind.
“I think it is quite permissible, with a wife inclined to extravagance,” said Rhoda. “In any case, for an outsider to interfere, and to try to take by stealth from a husband what cannot be got from him openly, is an infamous thing. You profess to love Sir Robert, and you show your gratitude by leading his wife into crime. It is frightful, disgraceful.”
“And you have told Sir Robert this extraordinary story?”
“Of course not. But I am thankful to see that he knows at last that he has trusted Lady Sarah too much, and I hope he will make it impossible for her to stoop to such conduct in the future.”
Jack shot at her a look so full of active malevolence that Rhoda was startled. A low cry escaped her lips, and instinctively she glanced down at his scarred right hand, which Jack as instinctively concealed.
Her knowledge that the affair they were discussing was only a part, and the least important part, of an ugly maze of wrong-doing which she did not dare even to allude to, suddenly seized her imagination so vividly that she sank into a chair, feeling faint and sick with the weight of guilt which seemed to be pressing down upon herself.
For was not this man guilty also of the death of the butler Langton? And what was the guilty secret that lay under that outrage?
For a moment they were both silent, Jack looking askance at her with an expression of intense malignity on his handsome countenance, and Rhoda for the time incapable of speech, and almost of movement.
Then there struck upon their ears the sound of deliberate footsteps in the hall, and both became aware, at the same moment, that the footsteps were those of Sir Robert, and that there was an unwonted firmness in his tread.
The next moment, as Jack glanced apprehensively at the door, it opened, and Sir Robert came in.
He was as white as the dead, and his mild eyes were burning with a strange and sombre fire. Rhoda held her breath, for she knew that, in the short time that had elapsed since he left them, he had made some momentous discovery.
“Miss Pembury,” said he, in a voice which hurt her, so cold and cutting were its tones, “will you leave us for ten minutes?” And then he looked full in her face with an expression which told her more than words could have done. She knew that he was in possession, if not of the worst there was to be known, at any rate of enough to break a man’s heart.
She hesitated a moment; she would have liked to try to say some word to mitigate the horror of the shock he had received. But what could she say?
Closing her lips, and casting at him one look full of reverence and sympathy and pity, she went, tottering, out of the room, and left the two men together.
With a swift movement, altogether unlike his usual leisurely actions, Sir Robert flung upon a little table near him a folded piece of paper.
“We have some notes to take, both of us,” he said, in a steady voice which sounded quite unlike his own. “Here is a pencil for you, and here is mine. I’ll give you half this paper, and I’ll keep half. Lend me your penknife.”
He was bending down over the paper, and holding out his hand, not looking at Jack.
There was a moment’s hesitancy on the part of the young man, and then he produced his penknife from his pocket. It was a neat little gold-cased affair, very flat, and with two blades. He opened one of these, and handed the knife to Sir Robert.
The baronet took it from him, but instead of using it as a paper-knife, as he had appeared to wish to do, he turned his back to Jack, and taking something from his own pocket, looked down earnestly at what he held in his hands. Then he turned without a word or a cry, and held under Jack’s eyes the penknife, with the second blade opened.
This second blade was broken, having lost about half an inch. In Sir Robert’s other hand was the missing piece of steel.
Holding the penknife in one hand and the piece of broken blade in the other, the baronet looked up steadily into the eyes of the young man, and said:
“I picked up this broken blade under the space in the wall where my Romney used to hang.” Jack started violently, in spite of all his caution. The baronet went on in an awful voice: “It was your penknife which cut the picture out of its frame. It was you who stole it. Deny it if you can.”
For a moment Jack was too much overwhelmed to speak.
Then, recovering himself, he stammered out:
“I don’t understand. Some one must have stolen my penknife. I—I am sur—prised that you can accuse me of stealing your picture.”
But he had scarcely got to the end of his stammering, halting speech when Sir Robert, with a vigour and muscular strength of which the younger man would never have dreamt him to be possessed, flung himself upon him, and dragging him across the floor, threw him violently upon the couch by the fireplace, and holding him down, in a grip that grew tighter every moment, stared into his face with eyes that blazed like those of an enraged lion.
“The picture! The picture! What do I care for the picture? What would a thousand pictures matter? What I want to know, what Iwillknow is—what have you robbed me of besides? You are a thief, a pitiful thief, but I could forgive you that. But you didn’t do this thing alone: you had a companion, an accomplice. Who was it? Who was it? Tell me, tell me!”
And as he spoke, with a terrible look, he clutched Jack Rotherfield by the throat and forced the guilty eyes to meet his own.
Jack Rotherfieldmade no reply; indeed the hands of Sir Robert were pressing so tightly on his throat that he could scarcely have spoken if he had wished to do so.
For a few minutes the two men glared each at the other; Sir Robert pale with fierce anger, in deadly earnest, and probably unconscious how strong was his grip. Jack gasping, gurgling, perhaps affecting more inconvenience than he actually experienced, in order to gain time, and to think of an answer to satisfy the incensed husband.
But before the silence was broken, while Jack still lay struggling in the fierce grip of his captor, there was a sound on the terrace, a scream, a flutter of drapery, and Lady Sarah dashed into the room.
“What is it? Oh, what is it? What are you doing? You are killing him!” she cried, as she flew across the room and tried to drag her husband away.
But he shook her off almost roughly, and said, in a tone he had never used to her before:
“Go away. We must settle this between ourselves, he and I.”
But she would not go. Guessing now that some terrible revelation had been made to Sir Robert, and that a crisis had been reached, she came back when she had been repulsed, and throwing herself between the two men, stared up into her husband’s face, and said:
“Tell me what has happened. Tell me, tell me. I must, I will know.”
Sir Robert relaxed his hold on Jack Rotherfield, seized his wife by the shoulders, and looked her full in the face with penetrating, angry eyes.
“Why do you ask these questions? You know what it is I’ve found out. I know that you and he were engaged together last night in robbing me. What have you to say for yourself? Answer me if you can.”
There was, under all his ferocity, a hungry look of longing, an expression of strained eagerness to hear something from her lips which would mitigate the harshness of the sentence he must pass upon her.
There was silence for a few moments. Jack Rotherfield had risen hastily from the couch, and was standing, panting, a little behind Sir Robert, in the hope of being able to catch Lady Sarah’s eye.
But the baronet, now wholly alert and as keen to suspicion as a man could be, foiled this attempt at an exchange of looks or signs, by turning her round, so that he faced Jack, who did not dare to move away.
Lady Sarah, sobbing, tearful, trembling, looked up with a sudden impulse of daring.
“Well,” she almost shrieked out, dashing away her tears, “and what if I did? I wanted money, and you wouldn’t give it me. I begged you to let me have some, and all you would let me have was twenty pounds. Twenty pounds! After spending thousands on your pictures! I know it was wrong to steal your Romney; I know it was theft. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know where to turn. I made up my mind to take the picture, partly to pay my bills, and partly to have my revenge on you for being so mean to me. And Jack found out what I was going to do. And he tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t be stopped. So he helped me instead. The blame is all mine, all mine. He didn’t want to do it. I took the snuff-boxes myself, without his knowing anything about it. I got hold of the keys Miss Pembury used to take care of, and I took the snuff-boxes and put back the keys. There. That’s the story, all, all of it.”
Her eyes were dry and burning by this time, and she gazed up boldly, defiantly, at her husband.
He was plainly uncertain what to do, what to believe. Lady Sarah pressed her advantage.
“Of course I know I’ve done wrong, and I won’t ask you to forgive me. I only ask you to put the blame upon me, and not upon Jack, who only helped me because he couldn’t let me be caught by myself.”
Sir Robert made an impatient movement. Such magnanimity made him incredulous.
“There’s no excuse for either of you,” he said. “You both knew me.”
“Yes, and I knew you wouldn’t help me, for I asked you, and you refused.”
“I have never refused to help you. I offered to pay your bills.”
“You refused to give me money for myself. You wanted to treat me like a child. You showed that you distrusted me. Well, who is to blame, then, if I showed that I was not to be trusted? I was only treating you as you evidently expected me to treat you, wasn’t I?”
Her husband would not look at her. He was puzzled, sick at heart with mistrust much deeper than any he had betrayed to her. Was this all that he had to learn, that these two had combined together to rob him of his picture? That was the question which was agitating him, and to which he dared not as yet seek an answer.
The horrible secret which they had kept from him, this theft by which his own wife had, in conjunction with another man, sought to revenge herself upon him and to rob him at the same time, was such an unexpected revelation to the loyal-hearted and generous man, that on learning it he seemed to have stepped into a new world, where everything round him wore a fresh aspect, and where those nearest and dearest to him were transformed into shapes scarcely human.
He heard her lame and audacious attempt at defence, and waved his hand as if to ward off a blow.
“I can’t argue with you,” he said. “The whole thing is too shocking, too humiliating to us both, to us all.”
“Very well. I don’t ask you to forgive me. You’ve never understood me. I was never a suitable wife for you, and we can’t do each other justice,” said Lady Sarah. “However, we need not trouble one another any longer. I’ll get back your snuff-boxes if I can.”
“No, no. I don’t want them back. I don’t want ever to see again anything to remind me of this terrible day.”
Lady Sarah threw out her hands in a gesture of helpless despair.
“Very well. You shall not see anything to remind you of it, if I can help it. Of course for one thing, you don’t want to see me again.”
He looked at her sternly, but she would not meet his eyes. She went on quickly:
“I’ll go back to my father’s house. Whatever has to be arranged for the future you can arrange with him and with my mother. I don’t care what becomes of me. I’ve not been treated properly: I’ve been treated as if I were a doll. My life has been spoilt, and I have been sacrificed to other people’s blundering. Very well. I’ll do what I can to efface myself, and let us hear no more about it. You’ve got back your picture, and that’s all you wanted. It will console you for the loss of a wife whom you never cared to try to understand.”
She grew more and more excited as she went on, and ended by throwing herself on a sofa in a paroxysm of hysterical weeping.
Sir Robert stood motionless in the middle of the room, while Jack Rotherfield eyed him stealthily from near the window.
His wife’s wild accusations only affected him in proportion as they seemed to support or to refute the idea of some graver guilt than theft. He would not look at her, would not let himself be softened.
“I will take the night,” said he gravely, “to consider what to do.” He turned abruptly to his wife. “You had better go upstairs at once,” added he, “and stay in your room until the morning.”
She sat up, indignant.
“Am I to be kept a prisoner?” she asked. “Why not send for the police and give me in charge at once?”
“You will stay in your room,” said he, unmoved by her words, “until I send for you in the morning.”
“I see. I am to consider myself in custody. And pray, who is to be my gaoler? Not Miss Pembury. I won’t be watched by that girl. I suppose now that you are going to get rid of me, you will arrange for her to stay here.”
Sir Robert made no answer. But Jack struck in, anxious not to have Rhoda’s influence to combat as well as that of the baronet. Although he had failed to make his peace with her that evening, he knew that she had not, so far, told the worst that she had to tell, and it was worth an effort to try to keep her mouth shut, if only on that affair of ten years ago to which, as he knew, she had a clue.
So he suddenly struck into the conversation with an appearance of great magnanimity.
“Miss Pembury must not go away. She doesn’t like me, I know, but she is a good woman and she can be trusted. If you have to quarrel with me, Sir Robert, I hope you won’t vent your displeasure on either of the ladies. Sarah has done wrong, and I did worse wrong in helping her over the picture. I’m sorry and I’m ashamed. I know nothing can excuse her or me. Send me away, but don’t quarrel with her. Forgive her. She has never done anything to offend you till now, and Miss Pembury will take her part, I’m sure. I’ll go away to-night, if you like, on condition you let me take all the blame. Indeed I ought to do so.”
This magnanimity did not appear greatly to impress Sir Robert. The terrible doubts which assailed him, indeed, made all other considerations seem of minor importance.
But this address, if it did not impress the baronet, had its effect upon Lady Sarah. She was quick to jump to the conclusion that she was to take her cue from Jack, and to keep “in” with Rhoda, if she could. So she said:
“Jack is right, Robert. You must keep Miss Pembury, if only for Caryl’s sake. As for poor me, I don’t count, do I, now? But at least if you are going to send me away, let me have a talk with Rhoda first. Perhaps I can explain things to her better than to you, and if she believes me, why, I suppose you will.”
Sir Robert frowned. He did not like the tone which he noted in his wife’s speech, through which there seemed to run an undercurrent of sarcasm which offended and distressed him.
Lady Sarah, having made up her mind what to do, was already, in her impulsive fashion, on the way to carry it out.
“I will go straight to her,” she said, “and ask her to persuade you, not to forgive me, if you don’t want to forgive, but to do me justice. You are not doing me justice now.”
“I am trying to,” said he gravely.
Lady Sarah was at the door.
“Perhaps, with her help, you will succeed,” said she with some appearance of dignity, as she swept out of the room, throwing at Jack a glance of intelligence which implied that she was following his lead.
Sir Robert did not condescend to look at Jack again, but turning towards him, with his eyes averted, he said:
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
And with that he left the room and went upstairs, determined to keep watch himself, in order to prevent any meeting between his wife and Jack before the latter was safely got out of the house.
Already he was hoping that things were not so bad as he had at first been inclined to fear. The spirit shown by his wife had been, he thought, a hopeful sign. Bad as her conduct had been in robbing her own husband, he was hoping that might prove to be the worst, and that even that was rather the result of malice and mischief than depravity.
Certainly it was hard to reconcile this view of her behaviour with common sense. But Sir Robert shrank from the alternative. Going straight upstairs, with the intention of playing gaoler, as his wife had called it, to the extent of preventing any interview between her and Jack, he saw Lady Sarah going into Rhoda’s room.
This was just what he would have wished, and he went on to his own apartment, which was next to that of his wife, without affecting to see her.
Rhoda, who had fled upstairs in an agony of apprehension when Sir Robert came into the drawing-room and asked her to retire, sprang to her feet when she heard Lady Sarah’s impatient and haughty voice asking for admittance.
The wilful beauty rushed into the room like a whirlwind, a habit of hers when she was excited, and standing in the middle of the floor, gazed for a few moments defiantly at Rhoda, who had risen to receive her visitor.
Rhoda saw at once that a crisis had been reached in the domestic history of the ill-matched pair. Lady Sarah’s face was flushed, her eyes were red, her hair was disordered. Her gown of clinging rose-coloured satin was crumbled and soiled, and in every feature of her face, in every fold of her dress were signs of the disturbance of the past half-hour.
“I hope you are satisfied now, Miss Pembury, with the result of your well-meant advice to my husband, about his treatment of me!” she cried in a voice shrill with emotion, as she played nervously with her rings, and flashed indignant glances into Rhoda’s frank face. “You’ve roused suspicions in him which he ought to be ashamed of. He has made an awful scene, first with Jack and then with me, and the end will be the break up of the household.”
“What scene?” asked Rhoda hoarsely.
“Sir Robert professes to have found out that the picture was stolen by—by Jack, and so I had to say that I was the culprit. Now he has given us till to-morrow, when, I suppose, I shall have to go back to my parents, and poor Jack will be driven away too, of course.”
Rhoda was desperate, so she refused to be apologetic, or even sympathetic.
“Well, he couldn’t do better than that, at least, Lady Sarah, and you know that as well as I do.”
To her intense surprise, Lady Sarah took this boldly expressed opinion much better than she had expected. Staring intently into Rhoda’s face, she asked in a low voice:
“Do you really mean that, that you think he ought to be sent away? Tell me why. Tell me why.”
“I think he has had a very bad influence upon you, Lady Sarah.”
The baronet’s wife took this remark also in fairly good part. It was easier, at any rate, to discuss this matter with another woman than with Sir Robert. She took a seat near the dressing-table, and signed to Rhoda to sit too. Then she leaned on her hand, and looked her steadily in the face.
“You think, I suppose,” said she coolly, “that I am fonder of Jack than I ought to be.”
This was such unexpected frankness that Rhoda stammered, not quite prepared with a reply. Lady Sarah nodded sagely.
“Of course in a way you are right. I confess that I’ve always liked Jack better than any other man, much better, for instance, than I’ve ever liked Sir Robert.”
“Oh, hush! pray don’t say such things!”
Lady Sarah’s pretty face grew mutinous.
“Why shouldn’t I say them? You have always known the truth so far, and it would be only cant to pretend you hadn’t. Come, Miss Pembury, be honest. You first knew me ten years ago. Didn’t you know, even then, that I liked Jack best? If you didn’t, you ought to have known. For I’m sure everybody else did.”
“Well, even if I did, of course I took it for granted, when I found you married to a man so good and so generous, and so devoted to you, that you were fond of him.”
“You should never take anything for granted, with a woman like me. I don’t think even Sir Robert took so much for granted as you seem to have done. A man thinks only of getting the woman he likes best to marry him, you know; he never asks himself whether he can make her love him. That’s whathetakes for granted. Sometimes, no doubt, he’s right; sometimes, he’s wrong. Sir Robert was wrong.”
“Oh, don’t. I don’t like to hear.”
“But I want to tell you. Look here, Miss Pembury. We are not great friends, you and I. You don’t like me very much, and perhaps I don’t appreciate you properly. My husband doesn’t think I do, I know.”
Rather shocked by this mingled cynicism and honesty, Rhoda was yet interested, fascinated. Lady Sarah could always command any one’s interest and attention when she chose to take the trouble. And as she talked, looking the while as pretty as a picture by Greuze in spite of her recent tears, Rhoda could not help her own heart going out to the wayward creature, who talked so simply, and who seemed so frank.
“But, at any rate, as we’re both women, we ought to be able to understand each other, if we try. I want you to understand me. Not from any wish to make out a case for myself, but because I want some one to know, and to remember afterwards, just what Sir Robert is doing in driving Jack Rotherfield away. He will have to go, of course. Probably Sir Robert will make a pretence of forgiving me for my share in the picture affair, and I shall be allowed to remain here, as an act of distinguished clemency. But I don’t want to remain. If Jack, who is my friend, is sent away, and I am kept here as a sort of prisoner on parole, I might as well die at once. Of what use will my life be to me? If I am not trusted to have my own friends, if I am to find my amusement in Sir Robert’s stuffed birds, why should I take the trouble to live at all?”
“But Sir Robert isn’t so unreasonable. He wants you to be happy, and as he sees that you can’t be happy long at home, he is ready to take you abroad.”
“But I don’t want to go—with him. Oh, don’t look shocked. I’ve only dared to be so candid with you because I’m really quite innocent of anything worse than being bored to death by my own husband. You need not tell me he is good and generous, and all that. I’ve no doubt he is. But I can’t work myself up into enthusiasm about such negative qualities. I want something more piquant, more exciting, in a man than that. If only I’d been allowed to go on in my own way, all would have been right. I wasn’t a very good wife, perhaps, nor an absolutely perfect mother. But I never did anything wrong, or shocking, nothing worse than amuse myself in my own way with my own friends. Now you, with the best intentions, I’m sure, have made that impossible, what can you expect of me? Do you think I shall settle down at once to spectacles and knitting? Do you imagine that Sir Robert will at once find me an ideal companion, say, for a wet day? Oh, no, you know better than that. Well, what do you expect then?”