CHAPTER V
SHE escaped from the wood into her tower, and wrote a letter to Randolph. She made no attempt at diplomacy; she told him the truth. Randolph loved her, and she was a woman of sufficient humour, but there was no one else to appeal to, and she argued that he would respect her frankness; and it had been his habit for many years to obey her commands. Moreover, in the sequestered recesses of his brain he was a Southerner, chivalrous and impulsive. She believed that he must by now have accepted the fact that she was another man’s wife, and she believed that he would help her.
After breakfast, which she took in solitude, as she was very late, she went to call on her mother-in-law, who had graciously intimated the night before that she would be visible at twelve. The maid conducted her to a suite of apartments removed from Lord Barnstaple’s by almost the width of the building, and Lee wondered if he had caused the walls to be padded. The bedroom was certainly very pink, and as fluffy as much lace and fluttering silk could make it. Miss Pix, in a white serge tailor-made frock, was seated in a large carved chair, with her profile in bold relief. Lady Barnstaple, in a pink peignoir, looked like a ball of floss in the depths of an arm chair. She smiled radiantly as Lee entered.
“So good of you to come!” she said. “Lee, dear,this is my intimate friend, Miss Pix. How perfectly brilliant you look! Of course you have been out. I almost went myself. I feelquitefit to-day; one would think I’d never had a nerve. Victoria, my beautiful daughter-in-law has been such a belle in the States, and has had an unheard-of number of offers, three of them from immensely wealthy members of the peerage, Lord Arrowmount’s friends. But it was an old boy-and-girl affair between her and Cecil, and I think it is all too romantic and sweet! I’ve felt ever so much younger since she came. I never had one spark of romance in my life. Men are in the way, though—we’ll have ever so much nicer times a year from now when you and Cecil have learned to exist without each other—not that I can complain that Barnstaple was ever in my way. Things might have turned out differently if he had been occasionally, for I was young enough, and romantic enough, when I married him; but he always was, and always will be, the most cold-blooded brute in England. Once I cared, but now I don’t. I’m content to have got the upper hand of him. It was that or being simply ground to powder myself. But, to say nothing of the fact that he sold himself in the most bare-faced manner, I soon learned that when I played a tune on my nerves he’d give in at any price; there are more ways of getting ahead of an Englishman than one. Still he was a fascinating creature—but that’s passed. Cecil always was sweet to me, and I’ve always simply adored him. Ifhe’dbeen his father—well! It would have made me simply ill if he hadn’t married a woman worthy ofhim. I believe he’s the only human being I’ve ever really loved. And he simply adores—but I shan’t be personal. Your clothes are really perfect—”
She rattled on, with brief intermissions, for nearly an hour. It was evident that her mood had undergone a metamorphosis in the night, and that she desired to be amiable. Lee could understand her “popularity”; her manner and certain intonations were most fascinating, and she constantly swept little glances of suffering appeal and voiceless admiration into her disciplined orbs. Her tiny hands fluttered, and from head to foot, in a pink light, she pleased the eye. Her smile was rare and dazzling. Lee wondered why, when she was young, Lord Barnstaple had not loved her.
Miss Pix made one or two sensible remarks in a low excellent voice, which had evidently received scientific training. When Cecil was flashing among his stepmother’s conversational pyrotechnics, her cheek looked less like paper for a moment, but her profile stood the strain.
Suddenly Lady Barnstaple jumped up. “You must dress and I must dress,” she said to Lee. “We’re going out to luncheon on the moor, and afterward we’ll stay and watch them shoot, if you like. Of course, everything will interest you so much—I envy you! I’m sick to death of shooting-talk myself! One doesn’t hear another topic from the twelfth of August until the first of November, and then one has hunting and racing for a change. I live for the London season—and the Riviera. I’ve had to give up dear, delightful Homburg. Well, ta, ta!”