Ruth was still quivering with the indignation of a woman who has been cheated of the last word when Bailey appeared and announced that he wished to speak seriously to her.
Bailey saw the hostility in her eyes and winced a little before it. He was not feeling altogether at his ease. He had had experience of Ruth in this mood, and she had taught him to respect it.
But he was not going to shirk his duty. He resumed:
“I am only speaking for your own good,” he said. “I know that it is nothing but thoughtlessness on your part, but I am naturally anxious—”
“Bailey,” interrupted Ruth, “get to the point.”
Bailey drew a long breath.
“Well, then,” he said, baulked of his preamble, and rushing on his fate, “I think you see too much of Basil Milbank.”
Ruth raised her eyebrows.
“Oh?”
The mildness of her tone deceived Bailey.
“I do not like to speak of these things,” he went on more happily; “but I feel that I must. It is my duty. Basil Milbank has not a good reputation. He is not the sort of man who—ah—who—in fact, he has not a good reputation.”
“Oh?”
“I understand that he has invited you to form one of his yacht party.”
“How did you know?”
“Sybil told me. He invited her. I refused to allow her to accept the invitation.”
“And what did Sybil say?”
“She was naturally a little disappointed, of course, but she did as I requested.”
“I wonder she didn’t pack her things and go straight off.”
“My dear Ruth!”
“That is what I should have done.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
“Oh? Do you think I should let Kirk dictate to me like that?”
“He is certain to disapprove of your going when he hears of the invitation. What will you do?”
Ruth’s eyes opened. For a moment she looked almost ugly.
“What shall I do? Why, go, of course.”
She clenched her teeth. A woman’s mind can work curiously, and she was associating Kirk with Bailey in what she considered an unwarrantable intrusion into her private affairs. It was as if Kirk, and not Bailey, were standing there, demanding that she should not associate with Basil Milbank.
“I shall make it my business,” said Bailey, “to warn Kirk that this man is not a desirable companion for you.”
The discussion of this miserable yacht affair had brought back to Bailey all the jealousy which he had felt when Sybil had first told him of it. All the vague stories he had ever heard about Basil were surging in his mind like waves of some corrosive acid. He had become a leading member of the extreme wing of the anti-Milbank party. He regarded Basil with the aversion which a dignified pigeon might feel for a circling hawk; and he was now looking on this yacht party as a deadly peril from which Ruth must be saved at any cost.
“I shall speak to him very strongly,” he added.
Ruth’s suppressed anger blazed up in the sudden way which before now had disconcerted her brother.
“Bailey, what do you mean by coming here and saying this sort of thing? You’re becoming a perfect old woman. You spend your whole time prying into other people’s affairs. I’m sorry for Sybil.”
Bailey cast one reproachable look at her and left the room with pained dignity. Something seemed to tell him that no good could come to him from a prolongation of the interview. Ruth, in this mood, always had been too much for him, and always would be. Well, he had done his duty as far as he was concerned. It now remained to do the same by Kirk.
He hailed a taxi and drove to the studio.
Kirk was busy and not anxious for conversation, least of all with Bailey. He had not forgotten their last tête-à-tête.
Bailey, however, was regarding him with a feeling almost of friendliness. They were bound together by a common grievance against Basil Milbank.
“I came here, Winfield,” he said, after a few moments of awkward conversation on neutral topics, “because I understand that this man Milbank has invited Ruth to join his yacht party.”
“What yacht party?”
“This man Milbank is taking a party for a cruise shortly in his yacht.”
“Who is Milbank?”
“Surely you have met him? Yes, he was at my house one night when you and Ruth dined there shortly after your return.”
“I don’t remember him. However, it doesn’t matter. But why does the fact that he has asked Ruth on his yacht excite you? Are you nervous about the sea?”
“I dislike this man Milbank very much, Winfield. I think Ruth sees too much of him.”
Kirk stiffened. His eyebrows rose the fraction of an inch.
“Oh?” he said.
It seemed to Bailey for an instant that he had been talking all his life to people who raised their eyebrows and said “Oh!” but he continued manfully.
“I do not think that Ruth should know him, Winfield.”
“Wouldn’t Ruth be rather a good judge of that?”
His tone nettled Bailey, but the man conscious of doing his duty acquires an artificial thickness of skin, and he controlled himself. But he had lost that feeling of friendliness, of sympathy with a brother in misfortune which he had brought in with him.
“I disagree with you entirely,” he said.
“Another thing,” went on Kirk. “If this man Milbank—I still can’t place him—is such a thug, or whatever it is that he happens to be, how did he come to be at your house the night you
