improper than that he should have persistently have remained at home? And yet there came a time when, as they three drove together at night in the closed carriage, Betty was conscious that, as he sat opposite to her in the dark, when he spoke, when he touched her in arranging the robe over her, or opening or shutting the window, he subtly, but persistently, conveyed that the personalness of his voice, look, and physical nearness was a sort of hideous confidence between them which they were cleverly concealing from Rosalie and the outside world.
When she rode about the country, he had a way of appearing at some turning and making himself her companion, riding too closely at her side, and assuming a noticeable air of being engaged in meaningly confidential talk. Once, when he had been leaning towards her with an audaciously tender manner, they had been passed by the Dunholm carriage, and Lady Dunholm and the friend driving with her had evidently tried not to look surprised. Lady Alanby, meeting them in the same way at another time, had put up her glasses and stared in open disapproval. She might admire a strikingly handsome American girl, but her favour would not last through any such vulgar silliness as flirtations with disgraceful brothers-in-law. When Betty strolled about the park or the lanes, she much too often encountered Sir Nigel strolling also, and knew that he did not mean to allow her to rid herself of him. In public, he made a point of keeping observably close to her, of hovering in her vicinity and looking on at all she did with eyes she rebelled against finding fixed on her each time she was obliged to turn in his direction. He had a fashion of coming to her side and speaking in a dropped voice, which excluded others, as a favoured lover might. She had seen both men and women glance at her in half-embarrassment at their sudden sense of finding themselves slightly de trop. She had said aloud to him on one such occasion—and she had said it with smiling casualness for the benefit of Lady Alanby, to whom she had been talking:
“Don’t alarm me by dropping your voice, Nigel. I am easily frightened—and Lady Alanby will think we are conspirators.”
For an instant he was taken by surprise. He had been pleased to believe that there was no way in which she could defend herself, unless she would condescend to something stupidly like a scene. He flushed and drew himself up.
“I beg your pardon, my dear Betty,” he said, and walked away with the manner of an offended adorer, leaving her to realise an odiously unpleasant truth—which is that there are incidents only made more inexplicable by an effort to explain. She saw also that he was quite aware of this, and that his offended departure was a brilliant inspiration, and had left her, as it were, in the lurch. To have said to Lady Alanby: “My brother-in-law, in whose house I am merely staying for my sister’s sake, is trying to lead you to believe that I allow him to make love to me,” would have suggested either folly or insanity on her own part. As it was—after a glance at Sir Nigel’s stiffly retreating back—Lady Alanby merely looked away with a wholly uninviting expression.
When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with determination, he laughed.
“My dearest girl,” he said, “if I watch you with interest and drop my voice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only do what every other man does, and I do it because you are an alluring young woman—which no one is more perfectly aware of than yourself. Your pretence that you do not know you are alluring is the most captivating thing about you. And what do you think of doing if I continue to offend you? Do you propose to desert us—to leave poor Rosalie to sink back again into the bundle of old clothes she was when you came? For Heaven’s sake, don’t do that!”
All that his words suggested took form before her vividly. How well he understood what he was saying. But she answered him bravely.
“No. I do not mean to do that.”
He watched her for a few seconds. There was curiosity in his eyes.
“Don’t make the mistake of imagining that I will let my wife go with you to America,” he said next. “She is as far off from that as she was when I brought her to Stornham. I have told her so. A man cannot tie his wife to the bedpost in these days, but he can make her efforts to leave him so decidedly unpleasant that decent women prefer to stay at home and take what is coming. I have seen that often enough `to bank on it,’ if I may quote your American friends.”
“Do you remember my once saying,” Betty remarked, “that when a woman has been PROPERLY ill-treated the time comes when nothing matters—nothing but release from the life she loathes?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And to you nothing would matter but—excuse my saying it—your own damnable, headstrong pride. But Rosalie is different. Everything matters to her. And you will find it so, my dear girl.”
And that this was at least half true was brought home to her by the fact that late the same night Rosy came to her white with crying.
“It is not your fault, Betty,” she said. “Don’t think that I think it is your fault, but he has been in my room in one of those humours when he seems like a devil. He thinks you will go back to America and try to take me with you. But, Betty, you must not think about me. It will be better for you to go. I have seen you again. I have had you for— for a time. You will be safer at home with father and mother.”
Betty laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her fixedly.
“What is it, Rosy?” she said. “What is it he does to you —that makes you like this?”
“I don’t know—but that he makes me feel that there is nothing but evil and lies in the world and nothing can help one against them. Those things he says about everyone—men and women—things one can’t repeat—make me sick. And when I try to deny them, he laughs.”
“Does he say things about me?” Betty inquired, very quietly, and suddenly Rosalie threw her arms round her.
“Betty, darling,” she cried, “go home—go home. You must not stay here.”
“When I go, you will go with me,” Betty answered. “I am not going back to mother without you.”
She made a collection of many facts before their interview was at an end, and they parted for the night. Among the first was that Nigel had prepared for certain possibilities as wise holders of a fortress prepare for siege. A rather long sitting alone over whisky and soda had, without making him loquacious, heated his blood in such a manner as led him to be less subtle than usual. Drink did not make him drunk, but malignant, and when a man is in the malignant mood, he forgets his cleverness. So he revealed more than he absolutely intended. It was to be gathered that he did not mean to permit his wife to leave him, even for a visit; he would not allow himself to be made ridiculous by such a thing. A man who could not control his wife was a fool and deserved to be a laughing-stock. As Ughtred and his future inheritance seemed to have become of interest to his grandfather, and were to be well nursed and taken care of, his intention was that the boy should remain under his own supervision. He could amuse himself well enough at Stornham, now that it had been put in order, if it was kept up properly and he filled it with people who did not bore him. There were people who did not bore him—plenty of them. Rosalie would stay where she was and receive his guests. If she imagined that the little episode of Ffolliott had been entirely dormant, she
