you’ll pardon my saying so—there was a certain ferocity about you.”
“I have learned at various educational institutions to conceal it,” smiled Betty.
“May I ask when you arrived?”
“A short time after you went abroad.”
“Rosalie did not inform me of your arrival.”
“She did not know your address. You had forgotten to leave it.”
He had made a mistake and realised it. But she presented to him no air of having observed his slip. He paused a few seconds, still regarding her and still thinking rapidly. He recalled the mended windows and roofs and palings in the village, the park gates and entrance. Who the devil had done all that? How could a mere handsome girl be concerned in it? And yet—here she was.
“When I drove through the village,” he said next, “I saw that some remarkable changes had taken place on my property. I feel as if you can explain them to me.”
“I hope they are changes which meet with your approval.”
“Quite—quite,” a little curtly. “Though I confess they mystify me. Though I am the son-in-law of an American multimillionaire, I could not afford to make such repairs myself.”
A certain small spitefulness which was his most frequent undoing made it impossible for him to resist adding the innuendo in his last sentence. And again he saw it was a folly. The impersonal tone of her reply simply left him where he had placed himself.
“We were sorry not to be able to reach you. As it seemed well to begin the work at once, we consulted Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard.”
“We?” he repeated. “Am I to have the pleasure,” with a slight wryness of the mouth, “of finding Mr. Vanderpoel also at Stornham?”
“No—not yet. As I was on the spot, I saw your solicitors and asked their advice and approval—for my father. If he had known how necessary the work was, it would have been done before, for Ughtred’s sake.”
Her voice was that of a person who, in stating obvious facts, provides no approach to enlightening comment upon them. And there was in her manner the merest gracious impersonality.
“Do I understand that Mr. Vanderpoel employed someone to visit the place and direct the work?”
“It was really not difficult to direct. It was merely a matter of engaging labour and competent foremen.”
An odd expression rose in his eyes.
“You suggest a novel idea, upon my word,” he said. “Is it possible—you see I know something of America—is it possible I must thank YOU for the working of this magic?”
“You need not thank me,” she said, rather slowly, because it was necessary that she also should think of many things at once. “I could not have helped doing it.”
She wished to make all clear to him before he met Rosy. She knew it was not unnatural that the unexpectedness of his appearance might deprive Lady Anstruthers of presence of mind. Instinct told her that what was needed in intercourse with him was, above all things, presence of mind.
“I will tell you about it,” she said. “We will walk slowly up and down here, if you do not object.”
He did not object. He wanted to hear the story as he could not hear it from his nervous little fool of a wife, who would be frightened into forgetting things and their sequence. What he meant to discover was where he stood in the matter—where his father-in-law stood, and, rather specially, to have a chance to sum up the weaknesses and strengths of the new arrival. That would be to his interest. In talking this thing over she would unconsciously reveal how much vanity or emotion or inexperience he might count upon as factors safe to use in one’s dealings with her in the future.
As he listened he was supported by the fact that he did not lose consciousness of the eyes and the figure. But for these it is probable that he would have gone blind with fury at certain points which forced themselves upon him. The first was that there had been an absurd and immense expenditure which would simply benefit his son and not himself. He could not sell or borrow money on what had been given. Apparently the place had been re-established on a footing such as it had not rested upon during his own generation, or his father’s. As he loathed life in the country, it was not he who would enjoy its luxury, but his wife and her child. The second point was that these people—this girl—had somehow had the sharpness to put themselves in the right, and to place him in a position at which he could not complain without putting himself in the wrong. Public opinion would say that benefits had been heaped upon him, that the correct thing had been done correctly with the knowledge and approval of the legal advisers of his family. It had been a masterly thing, that visit to Townlinson & Sheppard. He was obliged to aid his self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sort of girl, this Betty, whose childhood he had loathed, and, to his jaded taste, novelty appealed enormously. Her attraction for him was also added to by the fact that he was not at all sure that there was not combined with it a pungent spice of the old detestation. He was repelled as well as allured. She represented things which he hated. First, the mere material power, which no man can bully, whatsoever his humour. It was the power he most longed for and, as he could not hope to possess it, most sneered at and raged against. Also, as she talked, it was plain that her habit of self-control and her sense of resource would be difficult to deal with. He was a survival of the type of man whose simple creed was that women should not possess resources, as when they possessed them they could rarely be made to behave themselves.
But while he thought these things, he walked by her side and both listened and talked smiling the agreeable smile.
“You will pardon my dull bewilderment,” he said. “It is not unnatural, is it—in a mere outsider?”
And Betty, with the beautiful impersonal smile, said:
“We felt it so unfortunate that even your solicitors did not know your address.”
When, at length, they turned and strolled towards the house, a carriage was drawing up before the door, and at the sight of it, Betty saw her companion slightly lift his eyebrows. Lady Anstruthers had been out and was returning. The groom got down from the box, and two menservants appeared upon the steps. Lady Anstruthers descended, laughing a little as she talked to Ughtred, who had been with her. She was dressed in clear, pale grey, and the soft rose lining of her parasol warmed the colour of her skin.
