“If you have no room for me,” he said to Mrs. Jones, “you must scold Lady Mab. She has told me that you told her to invite me.”
“Of course I did. Do you think I would not sleep in the stables, and give you up my own bed if there were no other? It is so good of you to come!”
“So good of you, Mrs. Jones, to ask me.”
“So very kind to come when all the attraction has gone!” Then he blushed and stammered, and was just able to say that his only object in life was to pour out his adoration at the feet of Mrs. Montacute Jones herself.
There was a certain Lady Fawn—a pretty mincing married woman of about twenty-five, with a husband much older, who liked mild flirtations with mild young men. “I am afraid we’ve lost your great attraction,” she whispered to him.
“Certainly not as long as Lady Fawn is here,” he said, seating himself close to her on a garden bench, and seizing suddenly hold of her hand. She gave a little scream and a jerk, and so relieved herself from him. “You see,” said he, “people do make such mistakes about a man’s feelings.”
“Lord Silverbridge!”
“It’s quite true, but I’ll tell you all about it another time,” and so he left her. All these little troubles, his experience in the “House,” the necessity of snubbing Tifto, the choice of a wife, and his battle with Reginald Dobbes, were giving him by degrees age and flavour.
Lady Mabel had fluttered about him on his first coming, and had been very gracious, doing the part of an old friend. “There is to be a big shooting tomorrow,” she said, in the presence of Mrs. Jones.
“If it is to come to that,” he said, “I might as well go back to Dobbydom.”
“You may shoot if you like,” said Lady Mabel.
“I haven’t even brought a gun with me.”
“Then we’ll have a walk—a whole lot of us,” she said.
In the evening, about an hour before dinner, Silverbridge and Lady Mabel were seated together on the bank of a little stream which ran on the other side of the road, but on a spot not more than a furlong from the hall-door. She had brought him there, but she had done so without any definite scheme. She had made no plan of campaign for the evening, having felt relieved when she found herself able to postpone the project of her attack till the morrow. Of course there must be an attack, but how it should be made she had never had the courage to tell herself. The great women of the world, the Semiramises, the Pocahontas, the Ida Pfeiffers, and the Charlotte Cordays, had never been wanting to themselves when the moment for action came. Now she was pleased to have this opportunity added to her; this pleasant minute in which some soft preparatory word might be spoken; but the great effort should be made on the morrow.
“Is not this nicer than shooting with Mr. Dobbes?” she asked.
“A great deal nicer. Of course I am bound to say so.”
“But in truth, I want to find out what you really like. Men are so different. You need not pay me any compliment; you know that well enough.”
“I like you better than Dobbes—if you mean that.”
“Even so much is something.”
“But I am fond of shooting.”
“Only a man may have enough of it.”
“Too much, if he is subject to Dobbes, as Dobbes likes them to be. Gerald likes it.”
“Did you think it odd,” she said after a pause, “that I should ask you to come over again?”
“Was it odd?” he replied.
“That is as you may take it. There is certainly no other man in the world to whom I would have done it.”
“Not to Tregear?”
“Yes,” she said; “yes—to Tregear, could I have been as sure of a welcome for him as I am for you. Frank is in all respects the same as a brother to me. That would not have seemed odd;—I mean to myself.”
“And has this been—odd—to yourself?”
“Yes. Not that anybody else has felt it so. Only I—and perhaps you. You felt it so?”
“Not especially. I thought you were a very good fellow. I have always thought that;—except when you made me take back the ring.”
“Does that still fret you?”
“No man likes to take back a thing. It makes him seem to have been awkward and stupid in giving it.”
“It was the value—”
“You should have left me to judge of that.”
“If I have offended you I will beg your pardon. Give me anything else, anything but that, and I will take it.”
“But why not that?” said he.
“Now that you have fitted it for a lady’s finger it should go to your wife. No one else should have it.”
Upon this he brought the ring once more out of his pocket and again offered it to her. “No; anything but that. That your wife must have.” Then he put the ring back again. “It would have been nicer for you had Miss Boncassen been here.” In saying this she followed no plan. It came rather from pique. It was almost as though she had asked him whether Miss Boncassen was to have the ring.
“What makes you say that?”
“But it would.”
“Yes, it would,” he replied stoutly, turning round as he lay on the ground and facing her.
“Has it come to that?”
“Come to what? You ask me a question and I answer
