Mr. Caryll laughed. "So feminine!" said he. "Ha, ha! So very feminine—to assume the sex so readily."
"'Tis an easy assumption when the superscription is writ in a woman's hand."
Mr. Caryll, the picture of amiability, smiled between spoonfuls. "Your ladyship's eyes preserve not only their beauty but a keenness beyond belief."
"How could you have seen it from that distance, Sylvia?" inquired his practical lordship.
"Then again," said her ladyship, ignoring both remarks, "there is the assiduity of this fair writer since Mr. Caryll has been in case to receive letters. Five billets in six days! Deny it if you can, Mr. Caryll."
Her playfulness, so ill-assumed, sat more awkwardly upon her than her usual and more overt malice towards him.
"To what end should I deny it?" he replied, and added in his most ingratiating manner another of his two- edged compliments. "Your ladyship is the model chatelaine. No happening in your household can escape your knowledge. His lordship is greatly to be envied."
"Yet, you see," she cried, appealing to her husband, and even to Hortensia, who sat apart, scarce heeding this trivial matter of which so much was being made, "you see that he evades the point, avoids a direct answer to the question that is raised."
"Since your ladyship perceives it, it were more merciful to spare my invention the labor of fashioning further subterfuges. I am a sick man still, and my wits are far from brisk." He took up the glass of wine Leduc had poured for him.
The countess looked at him again through narrowing eyelids, the playfulness all vanished. "You do yourself injustice, sir, as I am a woman. Your wits want nothing more in briskness." She rose, and looked down upon him engrossed in his broth. "For a dissembler, sir," she pronounced upon him acidly, "I think it would be difficult to meet your match."
He dropped his spoon into the bowl with a clatter. He looked up, the very picture of amazement and consternation.
"A dissembler, I?" quoth he in earnest protest; then laughed and quoted, adapting,
She looked him over, pursing her lips. "I've often thought you might have been a player," said she contemptuously.
"I'faith," he laughed, "I'd sooner play than toil."
"Ay; but you make a toil of play, sir."
"Compassionate me, ma'am," he implored in the best of humors. "I am but a sick man. Your ladyship's too keen for me."
She moved across to the exit without answering him. "Come, child," she said to Hortensia. "We are tiring Mr. Caryll, I fear. Let us leave him to his letter, ere it sets his pocket afire."
Hortensia rose. Loath though she might be to depart, there was no reason she could urge for lingering.
"Is not your lordship coming?" said she.
"Of course he is," her ladyship commanded. "I need to speak with you yet concerning Rotherby," she informed him.
"Hem!" His lordship coughed. Plainly he was not at his ease. "I will follow soon. Do not stay for me. I have a word to say to Mr. Caryll."
"Will it not keep? What can you have to say to him that is so pressing?"
"But a word—no more."
"Why, then, we'll stay for you," said her ladyship, and threw him into confusion, hopeless dissembler that he was.
"Nay, nay! I beg that you will not."
Her ladyship's brows went up; her eyes narrowed again, and a frown came between them. "You are mighty mysterious," said she, looking from one to the other of the men, and bethinking her that it was not the first time she had found them so; bethinking her, too—jumping, woman-like, to rash conclusions—that in this mystery that linked them might lie the true secret of her husband's aversion to his son and of his oath a month ago to see that same son hang if Mr. Caryll succumbed to the wound he had taken. With some women, to suspect a thing is to believe that thing. Her ladyship was of these. She set too high value upon her acumen, upon the keenness of her instincts.
And if aught were needed to cement her present suspicions, Mr. Caryll himself afforded that cement, by seeming to betray the same eagerness to be alone with his lordship that his lordship was betraying to be alone with him; though, in truth, he no more than desired to lend assistance to the earl out of curiosity to learn what it was his lordship might have to say.
"Indeed," said he, "if you could give his lordship leave, ma'am, for a few moments, I should myself be glad on't."
"Come, Hortensia," said her ladyship shortly, and swept out, Mistress Winthrop following.
In silence they crossed the lawn together. Once only ere they reached the house, her ladyship looked back. "I would I knew what they are plotting," she said through her teeth.
"Plotting?" echoed Hortensia.
"Ay—plotting, simpleton. I said plotting. I mind me 'tis not the first time I have seen them so mysterious together. It began on the day that first Mr. Caryll set foot at Stretton House. There's a deal of mystery about that man—too much for honesty. And then these letters touching which he is so close—one a day—and his French lackey always at hand to pounce upon them the moment they arrive. I wonder what's at bottom on't! I wonder! And I'd give these ears to know," she snapped in conclusion as they went indoors.
In the arbor, meanwhile, his lordship had taken the rustic seat her ladyship had vacated. He sat down heavily, like a man who is weary in body and in mind, like a man who is bearing a load too heavy for his shoulders. Mr. Caryll, watching him, observed all this.
"A glass of Hock?" he suggested, waving his hand towards the flask. "Let me play host to you out of the contents of your own cellar."
His lordship's eye brightened at the suggestion, which confirmed the impression Mr. Caryll had formed that all was far from well with his lordship. Leduc brimmed a glass, and handed it to my lord, who emptied it at a draught. Mr. Caryll waved an impatient hand. "Away with you, Leduc. Go watch the goldfish in the pond. I'll call you if I need you."
After Leduc had departed a silence fell between them, and endured some moments. His lordship was leaning forward, elbows on knees, his face in shadow. At length he sat back, and looked at his companion across the little intervening space.
"I have hesitated to speak to you before, Mr. Caryll, upon the matter that you know of, lest your recovery should not be so far advanced that you might bear the strain and fatigue of conversing upon serious topics. I trust that that cause is now so far removed that I may put aside my scruples."
"Assuredly—I am glad to say—thanks to the great care you have had of me here at Stretton House."
"There is no debt between us on that score," answered his lordship shortly, brusquely almost. "Well, then—" He checked, and looked about him. "We might be approached without hearing any one," he said.
Mr. Caryll smiled, and shook his head. "I am not wont to neglect such details," he observed. "The eyes of Argus were not so vigilant as my Leduc's; and he understands that we are private. He will give us warning should any attempt to approach. Be assured of that, and believe, therefore, that we are more snug here than we should be even in your lordship's closet."
"That being so, sir—hem! You are receiving letters daily. Do they concern the business of King James?"
"In a measure; or, rather, they are from one concerned in it."
