That night Sylvia had shot her bolt. On the terrace she had drawn for the Earl a picture of the ménage upon whose roof she now looked down. It stretched out below her, that little domain, as if she were a goddess dominating its destinies. But she was not so certain of that. The dusky purple under Fittleworth’s skin showed no diminution. He continued to gaze away over his territory, reading it as if it were in a book—a clump of trees gone here, the red roof of a new villa grown up there in among the trees, a hop-oast with its characteristic cowl gone from a knoll. He was getting ready to say something. She had asked him the night before to root that family out of that slope.
Naturally not in so many words. But she had drawn such a picture of Christopher and Mark as made it, if the peer believed her, almost a necessity for a conscientious nobleman to do the best to rid his countryside of a plague-spot. … The point was whether Fittleworth would choose to believe her because she was a beautiful woman with a thrilling voice. He was terribly domestic and attached to his Transatlantic female, as only very wicked dark men late in life can contrive to be, when they come of very wicked, haughty and influential houses. They have, as it were, attended on the caprices of so many opera singers and famous professionals that when, later in life, they take capricious or influential wives, they get the knack of very stiffly but minutely showing every sort of elaborate deference to their life-partners. That is born with them.
So that the fate of that garden and that high-pitched roof was, in fact, in the hands of Cammie Fittleworth—in so far as great peers today have influence over the fates of their neighbours. And it is to be presumed that they have some.
But all men are curious creatures. Fittleworth stiffened at queer places. He had done so last night. He had stood a good deal. It had to be remembered that Mark Tietjens was an old acquaintance of his—not as intimate as he would have been if the Earl had had children, for Mark preferred houses of married people who had children. But the Earl knew Mark very well. … Now a man listening to gossip about another man whom he knows very well will go pretty far towards believing what a beautiful woman will tell him. Beauty and truth have a way of appearing to be akin; and it is true that no man knows what another man is doing when he is out of sight.
So that in inventing or hinting at a ruinous, concealed harem, with consequent disease to account for Mark’s physical condition and apparent ruin, she thought she was not going altogether too far. She had, at any rate, been ready to chance it. It is the sort of thing a man will believe … about his best friend even. He will say: “Only think. … All the while old X … was appearing such a quiet codger he was really …” And the words rivet conviction.
So that appeared to get through.
Her revelations as to Christopher’s financial habits had not appeared to do so well. The Earl had listened with his head on one side, whilst she had let him gather that Christopher lived on women—on the former Mrs. Duchemin, now Lady Macmaster, for instance. Yes, to that the Earl had listened with deference, and it had seemed a fairly safe allegation to make. Old Duchemin was known to have left a pot of money to his widow. She had a very nice little place not six or seven miles away from where they stood.
And it had seemed natural to bring in Edith Ethel, for, not so long ago, Lady Macmaster had paid Sylvia a visit. It was about the late Macmaster’s debt to Christopher. That was a point about which Lady Macmaster was and always had seemed to be a little cracky. She had actually visited Sylvia in order to see if Sylvia would not use her influence with Christopher. To get him to remit the debt. Even in the old days Lady Macmaster had been used to worry Sylvia about that.
Apparently Christopher had not carried his idiotcy as far as might be expected. He had dragged that wretched girl down into those penurious surroundings, but he was not going to let her and the child she appeared to be going to have suffer actual starvation, or even too great worry. And apparently, to satisfy a rather uneasy vanity, years before Macmaster had given Christopher a charge on his life insurance. Macmaster, as she well knew, had sponged unmercifully on her husband, and Christopher had certainly regarded the money he had advanced as a gift. She herself had many times upbraided him about it; it had appeared to her one of Christopher’s worst unbearablenesses.
But apparently the charge on the life insurance still existed and was now a charge on that miserable fellow’s rather extensive estate. At any rate, the insurance company refused to pay over any money to the widow until the charge was satisfied. … And the thought that
