that she was obliged to look into his face. “I’ve got a strong notion you’re maybe better able to take care of yourself than any of us guess,” he said. “Answer me now! How far’s it gone?”
Her heart beat a little faster, and her colour deepened to a lovely rose. “Indeed, I’m a good girl, sir,” she said.
“You’re a damned little liar!” he returned. “I don’t trust you, not an inch! What’s more, I don’t doubt Bart’s no match for you in wits. But I am, my girl! Don’t you make any mistake about that: I am! I’m warning you now! Don’t you make any plans to marry a Penhallow! I’d hound you into the gutter, you and all your family with you, before I’d allow Bart to take you to church! There! Give me a kiss, and be off with you!”
She made no objection to his kissing her, and stroking her smooth throat where he had grasped it, but she said, as she disengaged herself: “There’s no call for you to take on, sir. If it’s Jimmy that’s been trying to set you against me, I know well he has a spite against me.”
“And why?” he demanded. “What have you been up to give him a spite against you, I’d like to know?”
She withdrew to the door, and bent to pick up the Field. She laid this down on a table, and replied with one of her saucy smiles: “Indeed, I wouldn’t know, sir, unless it might be he’s jealous of me for being born the right side o’ the blanket.”
He slapped his thigh with a shout of laughter. “That’s one for me! You impudent hussy!”
She dropped him a mock curtsy and left him still laughing.
Outside his room, she lifted a hand to her breast, as though to feel the beating of her heart. She was profoundly disturbed, little though she had shown it; and she felt as if she had been running a great distance. She thought that she and Bart now stood in a position of danger, liable at any moment to be torn apart, for she was sure that once Penhallow suspected the truth he would be on the watch for confirmation of his suspicion. She was prepared to fight for possession of Bart; she thought that if it came to it she would fight the whole world by his side; but she had been brought up in poverty, and, unlike him, she did not minimise the hardships and the difficulties that must lie ahead of them if Penhallow disowned his son. Her most instant need was to find Bart, and to warn him not to own his intention of marrying her. She hoped she could induce him to behave prudently, but she was doubtful, knowing that he was innately honest, scornful of the tricks and shifts which were second nature to her. He did not condemn the little lies and deceits she used to protect herself; he laughed at them, believing that all women lied, and were not to be blamed for it. It was a feminine weakness, but a weakness to which he, rampantly male, was not subject. She would need all her art to persuade him to dissimulate to his father; and she became all at once frettingly anxious to find him before he could have time to go to his father’s room. He had gone off to a distant part of the estate, and had taken his lunch with him. She feared that he would only reach the house again in time to join the tea-party Penhallow was arranging, and she knew she would have no chance then of speaking to him, since she would be expected to help Reuben in the drawing-room.
Her mistress came into the hall, carrying a bowl of flowers which she had been replenishing, and exclaimed at finding her there standing with her back to Penhallow’s door. She took refuge instinctively in one of her lies. “I’ve been making up the Master’s fire, ma’am,” she said easily. “Let me take that from you!”
“I wish you would help me to do the vases in the Long drawing-room,” Faith said, with a suggestion of complaint in her voice. “Mr Penhallow has invited all sorts of’ people to tea, and someone must attend to the flowers. I have one of my bad heads.”
“You leave it all to me, and go and have a good lie down,” Loveday said coaxingly. 'Deed, you look fit to drop, ma’am!”
“I don’t know what I should do without you, Loveday!” Faith sighed.
Chapter Ten
In spite of the fact that Penhallow’s determination to hold a tea-party pleased no one, least of all the invited guests, it took place, Mrs Venngreen being the only person to decline the invitation. It was considered unlikely that Delia Ottery would come, since she visited Trevellin rarely, but she did come, persuaded, it was believed, by Phineas, who, for all his dislike of Penhallow, was extremely inquisitive, and rarely refused an invitation to visit him. Rosamund obviously came because Clifford had begged her to; and the younger Penhallows held that the Vicar came because Sybilla’s scones and cakes were very much richer than any baked under Mrs Venngreen’s auspices.
Penhallow did honour to the occasion by making Jimmy and Martha dress him, a circumstance which relieved one at least of his wife’s anxieties. The apprehension that he would appear at the party in his aged dressing-gown had induced her seriously to consider the advisability of retiring to bed with an unnamed illness.
Tea was served in the Long drawing-room, and the first guests to arrive were Clifford and Rosamund, Rosamund looking cool and remote in one of her excellent tailor-made flannel suits, and Clifford overflowing with geniality, and professing the greatest satisfaction on beholding his uncle in such robust health.
Penhallow, who had been wheeled into the drawing-room, and placed near the fire, which he had insisted on being lighted, quite regardless of the sultriness of the day, saw that Rosamund was looking cool and self- possessed, and maliciously summoned her to sit beside him, where, between the heat of the fire, and the raffish nature of his remarks, she very soon began to look hot, and even a little flustered. This pleased Penhallow so much that by the time Conrad ushered the Otterys into the room he was in a state of good humour which was felt to be only less dangerous than his moods of blind rage. He looked Delia over with twinkling eyes and said as he took her nervous hand in his: “Well, well! What a sight for sore eyes! Seeing you with pink roses in your hat takes me back to the time when I first met you, Delia, by God it does! Now, how long ago would that be? How old are you, Ray? Thirty-nine? Then it must be about forty years ago, eh, Delia?”
Miss Ottery blushed to the roots of her untidy grey hair, and stammered something almost inaudible. She was always at her worst and most incoherent in Penhallow’s presence, and looked now to be so unhappy that Faith, indignant with Penhallow for jibing at the poor lady’s youthful taste in dress, affectionately invited her to come and sit beside her on a sofa a little removed from his vicinity.
“No, no, you let Delia sit next to Ray!” said Penhallow. “He’s the one she really came to see, didn’t you, Delia? Always have had a soft corner for him, eh?”
“Oh, I’m sure Ray doesn’t want to be bothered with his old aunt!” Delia said, in a flutter of embarrassment. “Anywhere will do for me — not too near the fire!”
“And how, my old friend,” inquired Phineas, softly rubbing his hands together, “do you find yourself these days? It is indeed a pleasure to find you up and about!”
“I’m still pretty clever,” Penhallow boasted. “I’ll surprise the lot of you yet, Lifton included. You’re not wearing so well, Phineas: you’ve developed a paunch. You’re flabby, that’s what you are. Gone to seed. Lord, I remember when you were as thin as a rake, with all the girls after you! Sold you a horse once which wasn’t up to my weight.”
“Indeed, yes!” smiled Phineas. “A straight-shouldered grey, always throwing out a splint. I remember him well.”
“Honours,” said Eugene, “may now be said to be even. Of course, I feel that Father would have sold you an unsound horse.”
Penhallow accepted this tribute with a grin, and upon Clay’s coming into the room at that moment, at once called upon Clifford to “run your eye over this young cub!” Clifford shook hands with his cousin, and said that he looked forward to having him in his office.
“Oh well, as to that — I mean, nothing’s decided yet, is it?” Clay said with an uneasy laugh. “I’m afraid my bent isn’t in the least legal. I’ve always been more on the artistic side — if you know what I mean.”
“You know, even Aubrey doesn’t make me feel as sick as Clay,” remarked Conrad to the room at large.
““That will do, thank you!” Faith said sharply.
“Edifying close-up of the Penhallows at home!” muttered Vivian.
“But where is the rest of the family?” asked Phineas, in a light tone plainly meant to cover an awkward breach. “I seem to descry gaps in your ranks. Aubrey and Char I suppose we must not hope to see, but are we not to have the pleasure of meeting Ingram, and his charming wife; and this tall fellow’s counterpart?” He laid an affectionate hand on Conrad’s arm as he spoke, and smiled winningly round the circle.
